Ralph Waldo Emerson’s phrase “Hitch Your Wagon to a Star” instructs the reader to aim high and aspire to greatness. Chicago, whose ambition is formidable, appropriated the motivating phrase for “Resolutions,” a series in which she elevates a wide variety of craft techniques, including embroidery, applique, quilting, beading, macrame, and smocking, by combining them with painting.
A feminist minimalist in the 1960s, Chicago had become a politicized Pop artist by the 1990s. Drawing from folk instead of mass culture in the manner of Marisol rather than Warhol, Chicago experiments with unusual combinations of pictures, texts, and symbols. In Hitch Your Wagon to A Star (2000), the repeated five-point star and the linear rainbow sunburst reinterpret the stars and stripes.
Get into the Swing of Things, 2000
Do A Good Turn, 2000
Keep the Ball Rolling, 2000
Begin with a Clean Slate, 2000
Bury the Hatchet, 2000
