October is Arts and Humanities Month nationally and in Little Rock. Americans for the Arts has identified a different arts topic to be posted for each day in the month. Today’s feature is Monuments.

Earlier this month, a monument was dedicated in Little Rock which commemorates the Woman’s Suffrage Centennial.  Jane DeDecker’s Every Word We Utter is the centerpiece of a new plaza inside the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden.

DeDecker’s sculpture features Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Stanton Blatch, Alice Paul, and Ida B. Wells, all national leaders in the Women’s Suffrage movement. It also features two Arkansas women who played important roles:  Josephine Miller Brown and Bernie Babcock.

The sculpture is based on the concept of a drop of water not only causing ripples but also rising up again after its impact with the surface. The women are presented in a series of levels, each building on the work done by previous generations.

On the based of the sculpture are engrave the names of other courageous Arkansas women who were part of the decades-long women’s suffrage effort.  These include: Frances Reeve Edmonson Almand, Freda Hogan Amerigner, Dr. Ida Joe Brooks, Mary Ascena Burt Brooks, Anne Wade Roark Brough, Haryot Holt Cahoon, Florence Lee Brown Cotnam, Cate Campbell Cuningham, Eliza Bradshaw Dodge, Mary Fletcher Drennan, Pauline Floyd, Elizabeth Wallin Foster, Minnie Ursula Oliver Rutherford Fuller, Lizzie Dorman Fyler, Mary Knapp, Mary W. Loughborough, Clara Alma Cox McDiarmid, Josephine Irvin Harris Pankey, Charlotte Andrews Stephens, Adolphine Fletcher Terry, and Gertrude Watkins.