Suffrage Song Exhibit Opens

Suffrage Song, the newest exhibit on show in the Osborne Family Gallery inside Criss Library will be on display from March 1 to May 9, 2024. The Osborne Family Gallery is open during the same hours that Criss Library is open. Join us on Tuesday, March 5 from 6 to 8 P.M. in the Osborne Family Gallery to view the newest exhibit and join author Caitlin for a book talk. The talk is scheduled to begin at 7 P.M.

About the Exhibit

This exhibition collects original art for my illustrated history Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race and Voting Rights in the U.S. The project went through many iterations on its way to becoming a published book. I have formatted and reformatted the artwork for zines, gallery web content during the pandemic, a physical gallery installation, a large format printed book, and finally a handmade book dummy. I sent this book dummy to the graphic novel publisher Fantagraphics, and while we had a verbal agreement before, it was the book dummy and slipcase, hand lettered in silver ink, that got me a written contract. The book is set to be released June 4, 2024, after five years of research, drawing, editing, and waiting. Through all iterations of the project, I spent a lot of time thinking about publication design, looking at ephemera from the eras I was researching and creating covers that would evoke those time periods. The cases in the center of the gallery display artifacts from this process.

The framed artworks featured in this exhibition are the most recent pages I produced and include excerpts from the introduction and scenes added at the end of the project. These pages deal with some of the most fraught aspects of the history of women and voting rights in the U.S., including how women fought racism and failed to fight racism as they navigated the political system to gain their right to vote.

The panorama features key moments from suffrage and civil rights history, taking inspiration from 19^th century historical panoramas, American folk art, and medieval art. The hope is to inspire wonder and complicate history in ways that provoke viewer curiosity, disbelief, and further research, instead of comfortable acceptance. I believe illustrations can and should be used to add additional layers of meaning instead of merely simplifying and illustrating what is in the text. For so long images have been seen as subordinate to text—a way to bring difficult subject matter to life and make it easier to digest. I strive instead to use images to present nuanced and complicated histories and to illuminate the tangles, which often get closer to the truth.

About the Artist

Caitlin Cass is a cartoonist, illustrator and installation artist who makes work about failing systems and irrational hope. She honed her skills as a visual storyteller self-publishing a bimonthly periodical called the Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent, now in its eleventh year. Her cartoons and comics also appear in The New Yorker, The Lily, and The Nib. She is a 2020 recipient of a NEA Artworks grant for her installation Women’s Work: Suffrage Movements 1848-1965 at the Burchfield Penney Art Center and a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction. She is currently working on a graphic novel that confronts racist ideas within women’s suffrage histories. Caitlin grew up outside Chicago and has spent the last eleven years in Buffalo, NY where she earned her MFA, and taught at the University at Buffalo, SUNY and Buffalo Seminary. She joined UNO’s faculty in 2021 as Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Illustration and Time-Based Media. View her website.