Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) American Abstract Expressionist painter who pioneered the "Color Field" school of painting. She made massive abstract paintings and found unusual success at a time when the art world was still dominated by men. 

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1990-1990) was an Indian diplomat and the first woman to serve as president of the UN General Assembly.

“Education is not merely a means for earning a living or an instrument for the acquisition of wealth. It is an initiation into life of spirit, a training of the human soul in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue.”—Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

Science Fiction Author

Octavia Butler (1947 – 2006) was an African American science fiction author who mostly wrote about future societies and superhuman powers. She was awarded the esteemed Nebula and Hugo Awards, and was the first science fiction writer (of any race or gender) to be awarded a MacArthur “Genius Grant”. Her books are noteworthy for their unique mix of science fiction, mysticism, mythology and African American spiritualism, as well as placing young Black women and girls as the protagonists.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll".
She was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, heralding the rise of electric blues. 🎸

Through the 1940s, she was the hottest act on stage with a guitar. She became a model for Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Johnny Cash called her his favorite singer and biggest inspiration and Chuck Berry said his career was “one long Sister Rosetta Tharpe impersonation.” Her guitar technique also had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s (in particular, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.) 🎸 

She is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century—the founding mother who gave rock’s founding fathers the idea. 🎸

Astronaut Sally Ride (1951-2012) became the first American woman sent into outer space and and the youngest person ever to be sent into orbit when she flew on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983. She made two shuttle flights and committed her life to educating young people and encouraging them to explore careers in science.  “We have to make science cool again,” she said. And indeed she did, as she became a role model for young people, especially girls, so often left out of the sciences, for the next generations.

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was an outspoken Abolitionist and Human Rights Activist. She was born into slavery, but she escaped with her baby daughter after her owner reneged on his promise to emancipate her. Her other children stayed behind. Soon after, Sojourner found out that her owner had illegally sold her five year old son. Sojourner took the case to court and won. This was one of the first times a black woman successfully challenged a white man in the US courts. 

Over the years, Sojourner became a strong advocate for both civil rights and women's rights, and toured with other speakers at conventions around the country. In her most famous speech, "Ain't I Woman,"  she sought political equality for all women.not just black men. 

Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) was a Dorothea Lange was a photographer whose portraits of displaced farmers during the Great Depression greatly influenced later documentary photography.

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, spurring the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end segregation. The US Congress called her “the First Lady of Civil Rights.”

Dolores del Río (1904— 1983) was a Mexican actress, who became the first Latin American Hollywood star. Her starred in silent films as well as sound films, in which she worked hard to perfect her English.  As her Hollywood fame began to decline, she moved back to Mexico where she became an important fixture of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, which was now in full force. Throughout her long career, which also included radio, television, and theatre, she was admired internationally as a cinematic icon, the face of an Hispanic femme fetal. 

12x12” oil on canvas 2020 $675

Megan Rapinoe (b. 1985) one of the best American soccer players of all time. Off the field, she's a fierce advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality and racial justice. She helped the U.S. win gold at the 2012 London Olympics and the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2015 and 2019. This December, she was named as the Best Female Player in the world when she was awarded the prestigious "Ballon d'Or."

Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was an American photographer, who is best known for her black-and-white portraits of marginalized people, often thought as bizarre or unattractive by mainstream society. Diane and her husband were a successful team in fashion photography before she branched out on her own, wandering around the city, photographing the interesting New Yorkers she found on the fringes. She went to great lengths to meet her subjects and get the shot thats that she wanted, and her hard work paid off. She became admired as an artist as well as a photographer as she exhibited her work at the Museum of Modern Art and others. Diane Arbus is considered the most important female photographer of her generation and her work remains as groundbreaking and beloved today as it was then.

Septima Poinsette Clark (1893-1987) was an African-American teacher and civil rights activist who set up citizenship schools for disenfranchised African Americans in the 1950s and 60s. Here, they were taught to read and write so they could pass the literacy tests required by southern states to register to vote.  The citizenship schools began to spread through the south, and were adopted by Martin Luther King Jr’s  Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1961. As a result, many began to take control of their lives and discover their full rights as citizens. Septima’s 40 years of teaching experience and her own struggles and triumphs of finding work as a black teacher in the south equipped her to design an education program that changed the course of history…and empowered many African Americans to take control of their lives and discover their full rights as citizens.  She became known as the “Queen mother” or “Grandmother” of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was American novelist and poet, renowned for her work in science fiction and fantasy.

Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) was an Italian fashion designer. Along with Coco Chanel, her greatest rival, she is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in fashion between the two World Wars. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli's designs were heavily influenced by Surrealists like her collaborators Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau.

—Nadia Comăneci (born 1961) is a Romanian gymnast who, at 14 years old, became the first woman to score a perfect 10 in an Olympic gymnastics event. She is credited with popularizing the sport around the globe...and was a HUGE inspiration to young girls in the 1970 and 80s.

Dame Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) was an Iraqi-born British architect, known for her radical Deconstructivist designs. In 2004 she became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the highest honor of her field. In the early days of her career, she became known as a “paper architect,” meaning her designs were too avant-garde to move beyond the sketch phase and actually be built. This impression of her was heightened when her beautifully rendered designs—often in the form of exquisitely detailed colored paintings—were exhibited as works of art in major museums. Her major built works include the London’s Millennium Dome, the London Aquatics Centre (built for the 2012 Olympics) Michigan State University's Broad Art Museum in the US, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, and the Beijing Daxing International Airport in China. She was referred to as the "Queen of the curve", who "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity".

Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014) was a Japanese American who was put into an interment camp with her family after the Bombing of Pearl Harbor. Her experience greatly influenced a life of advocacy for many civil rights causes including the anti war movement, Black equality, reparations for Japanese-American internees, and political prisoners.  She was a passionate advocate for peace into her old age.

Diana Ross (b. 1944) is an American singer, actress, record producer, and all-around diva.

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) was an American suffragette, educator, and orator who advocated for black women’s self sufficiency at a time when that was a double-battle. She founded what was at the time the largest black women’s organization in the US, and from that, founded a school for women and girls.

Julia Morgan (1872-1957) America’s first truly independent female architect, left a legacy of over 700 buildings, many of which are now designated landmarks, in cities throughout California, as well as in Hawaii, Utah, and Illinois, her most famous being Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.

But her works were not limited to lavish buildings. As well as designing for the wealthy, she worked with many different clients in her her varied career. She designed several centers for the YWCA as well as private clubs and churches. One of the hallmarks of her varied career is that she worked with many different clients, not just the wealthy. She was willing to work with moderate budgets , creating less expensive family homes with open areas and large windows to give the impression of more space, using indigenous materials (progressive for her day) and changing the scale of her designs to work with uneven topography. She tried to give a careful solution to all of her clients, whether they were wealthy or not. In her way, she became an equal in her field (to the men who were dominating it so far) by treating all her clients equally. And with that attitude, she was able to leave an unforgettable mark.

“My buildings will be my legacy… they will speak for me long after I’m gone.” —Julia Morgan

Mary Blair (1911-1978), born Mary Robinson, was an  American artist, who produced drawings for the Walt Disney Company in the 1940s and 50s for such projects as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South, and Cinderella.  Her “explosion of color” style, which she would become famous for, emerged during the Disney Studios “South American Goodwill Tour." Her most beloved contribution was the design for the ride "It's a Small World" at Disneyland. Many of her illustrated children's books remain in print.

Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work provided key insights into DNA structure.

Artists note: The day I painted Rosalind was a very important day to our family, the third anniversary of the accident that led to my husband’s death as well as the 9th month anniversary since the day he died. I wanted to paint someone in tribute to him. Whenever I’d see a photo of Rosalind Franklin, I thought she looked a lot like Vernon in the face…and they were both British. I love the thoughtful look on her face…even in photographs, she comes across (to me) as very intelligent. He was the same way.

Clara Rockmore (1911-1998) was a Lithuanian musician who became the most famous and accomplished performer of the electronic instrument, the theremin. As a child, Clara had been a violin prodigy, admitted to the Imperial Conservatory of Saint Petersburg at the age of five. Though she was poised for a life as a professional violinist, tendinitis in her bow arm (caused by childhood malnutrition) forced her to abandon the instrument. After her Jewish family fled Russia to live in America, Clara met another immigrant, Léon Theremin, who had invented the self-named theremin. With her refined violin skills, she became the most prominent theremin player, performing widely, bringing attention to the strange instrument, and helping Leon improve his invention. While the theremin is mostly known for spooky sounds used in vintage science fiction movies, under Clara’s control, it sounded like a classical stringed instrument or even a singing voice.

Mary Anning (1799 – 1847) was a fossil collector and paleontologist from Lyme Regis, Dorset in Southwest England, who became known around the world for important finds she made in marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the Jurassic Coastline. While searching for the plentiful ammonite fossils which she sold as novelty items to tourists, she began to discover larger prehistoric fossils, excavating the first Ichthyosaurus skeleton and discovering the first intact Plesiosaurus skeleton. Her findings contributed to important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. She was also the true-life figure behind the nursery rhyme

Ruby Bridges (born 1954) was the first African-American child to attend an all-white public elementary school in the American South. Her grace under pressure, even to the point of praying for the hateful crowds that protested her every day, and continuing to attend class with her teacher even while all the white students were kept out of school by their parents for some time, became a beacon of light in a changing America and inspired all other schools around the country to begin integrating. She remains a passionate activist for civil rights to this day, a living legend.

Billie Jean King (born 1943) is an American tennis player who broke don gender barriers in sport in her push (and win!) for equal prize money.

Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1883-1961) Teacher and founder of Palmer Memorial Institute, a trailblazing Southern prep school for African-American students.

Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1906-1972) was a German theoretical physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize for developing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus.

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was an American writer who authored over 30 books and short-story collections and wrote poetry as well. Little Women, her most famous book, was a novel for girls and an instant bestseller. Written in 1868, it departed from the existing  practice of idealized and/or stereotypical children in books meant for young readers. Instead, it offered a fully realized young heroine in the spirited character of tomboy Jo March. Little Women remains a beloved classic of children’s literature today. Alcott is also remembered for her book Hospital Sketches, which she penned in 1863 based on letters she had written home while serving as a nurse in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War.

source: historynet.com

Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) was a Russian-born German intellectual who has been called "the most brilliant woman of her generation." She was a writer (poet/play-write/essayist) a philosopher, and most notably, the world's first female psychoanalyst. She was also the muse of several important men of her time: Freud, Nietzsche, and the poet Rilke (whose name she urged him to change from Rene to Rainer because she thought it sounded more masculine

Marian Anderson (1897 – 1993) was an African American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century. Though she travelled in Europe as a celebrity, on her travels through the United States, Marian experienced racial prejudice on a daily basis; she was often denied access to lodging or dining facilities. When the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow Marian as a black woman to sing in Constitution Hall in Washington D.C., Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization in protest. Later, at the invitation of the Secretary of the Interior, Marian sang at the Lincoln Memorial for Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, for an audience of 75,000. Later on, she became the first African-American to perform as a regular member of the New York Metropolitan Opera. As well as traveling extensively as a singer for diplomatic events, she sang at two presidential inaugurations, and won numerous honors and awards throughout her life.

Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) was an important Civil Rights activist and the wife/widow of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  After his death, she continued to eloquently advocate for non-violence and equal rights for all people, regardless of race or gender. She has been called the First Lady of Civil Rights.

You can hear some of her own powerful words on this podcast.

Artist’s note:  After the emboldened white supremacist march and attack over the weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, I want to make a statement against racism. But Coretta’s words speak stronger than mine could. We can’t just rest on our laurels and think everything should be fine because others have fought the fight before us….It’s our generation’s responsibility to fight against hatred and bigotry too. Obviously, these things don’t just go away. 

Alice Paul (1885 -1977) was a leading civil rights activist and organizer responsible for the final push and success in winning passage of the 19th Amendment (woman suffrage) to the U.S. Constitution. After staging an 18 month long picket line outside the White House, she and many others were beaten and sentenced to prison for seven months (on the charge of “obstructing traffic.”) In prison, she staged a hunger strike, but she was force-fed and temporarily institutionalized. Journalistic sympathy for their plight helped turn public and presidential support toward the cause, and in 1919, both the House and Senate passed the 19th Amendment...ending a 73-year battle for the right to vote.

Keiko Fukuda (1913-2013) Japanese American judoka who was the first woman granted the rank of sixth dan (sixth-degree black belt.) She continued her practice of Judo until she died at 99. She’s fondly referred to as Mrs Judo.

Irena Sendler (1910-2008) was a Polish social worker who rescued 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto and placed them in convents and with non-Jewish families. She would tuck them away in suitcases and doctor's bags and hide them in her car. She trained her dog to bark if a child cried or a guard came near, which would cause the guard's dogs to bark in reaction. She saved 2500 lives...more than any other single person in that period.

Anita Hill (b.1956) is an American attorney and academic. She is a university professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University. She became a national figure in 1991 when she accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor, of sexual harassment. he was nominated and voted in anyway.

⭐️ Dr. Angela Davis (1944-) is an activist, professor, and writer who has advocated for social change since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Now 76, she remains an outspoken and respected voice for gender and racial equity and prison reform. She remains one of the most famous living icons of activism in the United States.

Maria Tallchief (1925-2013) was a Native American ballerina.  In a field dominated  by Russian dancers, Maria danced her way through racial and cultural barriers to become one of the country’s leading ballerinas from the 1940 to 1960s —and one of the only Native Americans She became America’s first prima ballerina at the New York City Ballet, and held that title for 13 years, touring the world and becoming an international star. When she was older, she turned to teaching, founding and becoming artistic director of the Chicago City Ballet. She was widely praised through her life for her precision and musicality, something that she always attributed to her Osage heritage.

Bessie Coleman (1892 – 1926) was an American civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first woman of Native American descent to hold a pilot license. She was also the first person of African American and Native American descent to hold an international pilot license. Bessie would only perform if the crowds were desegregated and entered thru the same gates.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

Corita Kent (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. At age 18 she entered the religious order Immaculate Heart of Mary, eventually teaching in and then heading up the art department at Immaculate Heart College. Her work evolved from figurative and religious to incorporating advertising images and slogans, popular song lyrics, biblical verses, and literature. Throughout the ‘60s, her work became increasingly political, urging viewers to consider poverty, racism, and injustice. In 1968 she left the order and moved to Boston. After 1970, her work evolved into a sparser, introspective style, influenced by living in a new environment, a secular life, and her battles with cancer. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986. At the time of her death, she had created almost 800 serigraph editions, thousands of watercolors, and innumerable public and private commissions.

source: http://corita.org/

Marie Curie (1867-1934) is considered one of greatest scientists of all time. Her research opened the gates to modern science as we know it. Raised in Russian-occupied Poland, she was not allowed to study with the men in the Polish Universities, but after moving to Paris, she became the first woman to earn a physics degree from the Sorbonne—then the first woman to teach there. She was the rst woman to win the Nobel Prize (Physics in 1903) and the rst person to win the award in two different fields (Chemistry in 1911). She discovered the element radium, establishing the development of X-rays as well as radioactive therapies for cancer.

Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth ( 1903 – 1975) was an English sculptor, one of the few female sculptors of her era. She was also revolutionary in her style as she carved massive Modernist sculptures by hand. She was also the mother of four….three of them, triplets. In her lifetime, she did achieve some international success, but she was often thought of as provincial because she was also a mother and lacked the freedom of her contemporaries. Still, the focus of her life and her attention to her children in each season caused her work to be extra special, which aficionados especially appreciate now.

Artist’s note: I was drawn to paint Barbara Hepworth after receiving an email from my husband’s first girlfriend (a friend of mine too) in which she remembered visiting the Barbara Hepworth house in St. Ives, Cornwall, when they were art students. I remembered visiting it too with him (over 20 years later) when we visited St. Ives with my traveling parents. I love when I paint a person, and learn about about her, and hers is just the message I need to hear. Granted, this is often the case when I paint artists and writers…but her story came to me in a time when I was really struggling with the idea of trying to be an artist and support my family as a single mother. I was trapped in the story that I couldn’t do it all. So finding out that this woman whom I already admired (I’ve touched her work in its natural habitat!) also had TRIPLETS (along with a first child from another marriage) was a kiss of life to a hurting soul.  Granted, she was a genius, but I am inspired. Yes, please, Ms. Hepworth, I’d love you to be my mentor! <3

“I found one had to do some work every day, even at midnight, because either you’re professional or you’re not.”—Barbara Hepworth

Carol Burnett Carol Burnett (b. 1933) first female host of a TV variety show (which continued for 11 years)

⭐️ Fannie Lou Hamer (1914-1977) was a civil rights activist in the 1960s who led voting drives and co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The 20th child of sharecroppers, Fannie grew up in poverty, and at six, joined her family picking cotton; at twelve, she left school in order to work. In 1961, Hamer received a hysterectomy by a white doctor without her consent while undergoing surgery to remove a tumor. Such forced sterilization of Black women, as a way to reduce the population, was widespread practice in Mississippi. (Afterward, Fannie and her husband adopted children from other poor families.) ⭐️Her civil rights activism began in 1962, when she volunteered to challenge voter registration procedures that excluded African Americans. Fired from her job of 18 years for attempting to register to vote (she failed a literacy test), she became a field secretary for the SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). In 1963, after successfully registering to vote, Hamer and several other black women were arrested for sitting in a “Whites-only” bus station restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina. At the jailhouse, she and several of the women were brutally beaten, leaving Hamer with lifelong injuries from a blood clot in her eye, kidney damage, and leg damage. ⭐️She later helped and encouraged thousands of African-Americans in Mississippi to become registered voters and helped hundreds of disenfranchised people in her area through her work in programs like the Freedom Farm Cooperative. In 1964 Hamer helped organize Freedom Summer, which brought hundreds of college students, Black and White, to help with African American voter registration in the segregated South. ⭐️The same year, she announced her candidacy for the Mississippi House of Representatives but was barred from the ballot. She brought the civil rights struggle in Mississippi to the attention of the entire nation during a televised session at the convention, which was unsuccessfully undermined by President Johnson. Along with her political activism, Hamer worked to help the poor and families in need in her Mississippi community. She also set up organizations to increase business opportunities for minorities and to provide childcare and other family services.

Sadie McCallum (born 2006) is an inventor and advocate. She has Cerebral Palsy and has been inventing methods to help overcome mobility challenges. I have been following Sadie's story for awhile now. She's got a great brain and a wonderful heart to make life easier for herself and others. She's a groundbreaking girl for sure, one to watch! (Also, Claire, her younger sister, is her best friend and faithful assistant...she's very special too.)

Susie King Taylor (1848-1912) is known as the first African American Army Nurse. She served in the Civil War as part of an All-Black regiment and taught the soldiers to read and write when they weren't fighting. She also was the only African American woman to publish a memoir of the Civil War: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops.

When she was young, Georgia laws prohibited Susie (the daughter of slaves) to get an education so she attended two secret schools taught by black women. From them she gained the rudiments of literacy, then extended her education with the help of two white youths, both of whom knowingly violated law and custom.

She became the first black teacher for freed African American students to work in a freely operating freedmen's school in Georgia. She taught forty children in day school and "a number of adults who came to me nights, all of them so eager to learn to read, to read above anything else." 

unko Tabei (1939-2016) was a Japanese Mountaineer--the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest and the first woman to climb the highest peak on every continent.

Rigoberta Menchú (born 1959) is a K'iche' political and human rights activist from Guatemala. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's indigenous feminists during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting indigenous rights in the country. In, 1992, she won the Nobel Peace Prize. She has also become a figure in indigenous political parties and ran for President of Guatemala in 2007 and 2011.

Jane Austen  (1775 –  1817) was an English novelist, who’s work depicted middle class British life at the beginning of the 19th century. Her strong-willed and independent female characters have to navigate a world in which they are expected to marry in order to have a place in respectable society. Though her novels were not very popular when Jane was alive, they have become timeless classics, rarely out of print for the last 200 years. And though she only published six books, she is considered one of the most influential novelists of all time.

Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Mansfield Park (1814)

Emma (1815)

Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)

Persuasion (1818, posthumous)

Valentina Tereshkova (1937–) is a Russian cosmonaut and engineer. She is the first woman to have flown in space in 1963, twenty years before an American woman would ever go. She was also the first civilian to go into space. Before this, she worked in a textile factory with a skydiving hobby. Unfortunately, she only went to space once one in her life, but she has pined for it every since. She became known in Russia as a dignitary, and she speaks of her ideals and her experience.

Judy Blume, beloved children's/young adult author and anti-censorship advocate.

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) leading British Suffragette and radical who helped win the vote for women in the U.K. over 100 years ago.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874—1942) was a Canadian novelist, arguably Canada’s most widely read author.  Her first novel, Anne of Green Gables (published in 1908), became an instant bestseller and has remained in print for more than a century, making the plucky character of Anne Shirley a mythic icon for imaginative, intelligent young girls all over the world. The Anne of Green Gables series has been translated into at least 36 languages as well as braille, not to mention television and film adaptations. LM Montgomery was financially successful as a writer in her own right, but managed all this while being carrying out the duties expected of a minster’s wife and raising three boys. Montgomery went on to publish 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems, and 30 essays. She is revered not only for her charming Anne character, but for putting the smaller parts of Canada on the literary map, boosting interest and tourism for those areas of the country. In 1935, Maud was awarded the esteemed honor of officer of the Order of the British Empire.

 Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born 1943) is an acclaimed Irish astrophysicist, who was among the few women to pursue a career in science at the time. As a graduate student, she discovered pulsars (a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star or white dwarf, that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation) but was snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize, most likely due to her gender. But she went on to enjoy a life filled with many honors in her field. Bell Burnell was president of the Royal Astronomical Society, president of the Institute of Physics, president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Pro-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. 

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American novelist , poet, critic, playwright, and art collector who became an important patron to many great modern artists in Paris in the 1920s (including Picasso and Matisse.) The literary salon she hosted in her home included other expat writers in Paris such as Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, coining the phrase “the Lost Generation,” which they would come to be known.

Margaret Hamilton (b.1936) is a computer programmer and software engineer, who as a working mother, led the team that created the onboard flight software for the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11. This computer system was the most sophisticated of its day. Her rigorous approach was so successful that no software bugs were ever known to have occurred during any crewed Apollo missions. (She also came up with the term Software Engineering to describe her work.)

Princess Diana Spencer (1961-1997) was married to Charles, the Prince of Wales, (who is eldest child and heir apparent to the Queen of England.) She became known as the “People’s Princess” because of the way she chose to connect with everyday people in a way that the aristocracy had not yet done. Diana got involved in charity work and went so far as to minister to AIDS victims in Africa, touching them and loving them in a time when people were still not sure the disease was not airborne or touch-contagious. She also became president of Great Ormand Street Hospital for children in London. A wonderful humanitarian that broke from royal tradition, she was also a mother of two boys. In the end, she was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997, leaving the world heartbroken and without an famous, yet compassionate role model.

8x10 Oil on Canvas, 2022

was $500

SEPTEMBER SALE $250

Mary Temple Grandin (born 1947) is an American professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior, and autism spokesperson. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to publicly share insights from her personal experience of autism. She invented the "hug box" device to calm those on the autism spectrum. In the 2010 Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, she was named in the "Heroes" category.

credit: Wikipedia

Emma Gonzalez (born 1999) was a student who survived a mass shooting at her high school in Parkland, Florida last year and became an outspoken activist and advocate for gun control, protesting the lack of action by politicians funded by the NRA and organizing the March for Our Lives, which inspired high school students all over the country to show their support and speak their voices into a system that very much affects them.