The Closing Act of this year’s Wild Rumpus Winter Circus show featured a shout out to the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, which was ratified in 1920 (and Wisconsin was one of the first states to ratify it!). As part of that act, the director wanted to have picket signs saying things like “VOTES FOR EVERYONE” in the style of Suffragette protest signs. We eventually settled on three designs—”USE YOUR VOTE,” “VOTES FOR EVERYONE” and “VOTES FOR CLOWNS” (hey, it’s the circus!). Although actual women’s suffrage protest signs were mainly plain black text on plain white paper, I added a few simple ornaments to these (again, it’s the circus!).
In addition to the plain ones for use as stage props, I printed a bunch on various color backgrounds using stock that I use to roll off excess ink at the end of a print run. This lets me use a lot less solvent to clean up my ink rollers, and gives me interestingly textured and colored backgrounds to use for prints like these (less waste, more variety!). I also added one more design to this run, “Keep Clowning Around”.
A lot of these were sold at the show, but there are still a few left in the shop.
