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SALT LAKE CITY — It is a visual tribute to some of the most important people in history. Quite a few you have never heard of until now.
But in Salt Lake City, a group of artists is behind the effort to bring these women out of obscurity.
Michelle Obama, Anne Frank and Isadora Duncan are women whose names resonate through the generations.
"We wanted to look at women's history through several lenses," said international pop artist Jann Haworth. She also hoped to bring the contributions of over 100 females into better focus.
To accomplish this task, Haworth asked dozens of Utah women and a few men to help her create the mural "Work in Progress."
"We wanted the mural to be representative of women who are catalysts for change," she said.
Haworth's daughter and fellow artist Liberty Blake assembled the stencils of the women into a collage spanning seven panels that are 28 feet long and 8 feet wide.
"I find working on a big scale very inspiring," Blake said. "Collage is kind of bringing things together that maybe don't belong together."
For instance, some of the women stand alone while others appear to chat across the decades.
"We have Mata Hari in conversation with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I love that combination" said Haworth as she chuckles about how it all came together.
Another unusual mix is the cross-section of people who came together to pick women for the mural and for many, to create art for the first time.
"I would say 80 or 90 percent of the representations here were done by non-artists," Haworth said.
"We were all just so taken back by the process and to see it all come together and come to life was very inspiring for all of us," said Courtney Giles, the local YWCA's residential educator.
Giles recruited several women from the YWCA shelter for the project. The work proved to be life-changing.
"I think art is a huge healing and coping mechanism," she said.
Like a sewing circle, the mural contributors gathered after hours to create their art. As they cut and sketched, they talked about the women portrayed on canvas and about their own lives.
"As soon as you have a group of people and you have both hands engaged, something happens, and that brings magic to the project," Haworth said.
Tyler Bloomquist, one of the men involved in the project and an accomplished artist himself, said "working on the stencils as a group helped to start a dialogue and start to kind of talk about inequality" as a community.
The unusual mix of artists will be a permanent part of the exhibit. Photographer Lynn Blodgett captured their portraits and asked each participant to reflect on this experience.
"It might be that it made them think about their mother or it made them think about their own life. So, it solicited a lot of different reactions," Blodgett said.
Lesser-known women like film director Agnes Varda, the young Dutch sailor Laura Dekker and astronaut Ellen Ochoa are part of the mural because, Haworth said, "we need to talk about women who are historically very important but we don't know their names."
Haworth expected to be adding the face of Hillary Clinton to the mural in the future as the first female president of the United States. Instead, her view of the mural changed dramatically with Clinton's defeat. Haworth thought she saw it in the women's faces.
"It transformed in that time and I looked at the mural and it was like these women were looking at me accusingly almost like it was a picket line," Haworth said.
The mural is sure to change again as it travels across the country and new artists add women onto this "Work in Progress."
If you recognize Jann Haworth's name, it might be because she was the co-creator of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. She has also distinguished herself in many other areas of pop art and is currently the artistic director at Salt Lake's Leonardo Museum.
"Work in Progress" is on display at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art through Jan. 14. The museum is closed on Sundays and Mondays.
