It's a scary time of year, but not because of Halloween. Looming large in our collective consciousness is Election Day, Nov. 5, which this year is especially fraught, regardless of your party affiliation. Democracy on the ballot, Americans polarized like never before — we've all heard the rhetoric.
Is there anything we can agree on?
The flag, says photographer Gen Heywood, whose exhibition "The Pledge of Allegiance" runs through Nov. 30 at Gonzaga University's Urban Art Center in downtown Spokane.
The flag and the Pledge of Allegiance are "two icons all of us hold as ours," she adds.
Heywood's series of 12 black-and-white photographs is modest in size, yet hugely powerful. She juxtaposes local imagery involving the American flag, some of them overt but others deliberately ambiguous, against a word or several words from the Pledge of Allegiance.
A particularly ironic image is of Colville/Arrow Lakes artist Virgil "Smoker" Marchand's steel sculpture of a tribal warrior atop a horse lifting up a peace pipe. A tattered flag flies behind the sculpture, which is located at the Coeur d'Alene Tribe Warrior Veterans Memorial and Memorial Park. Heywood titled her photo "Justice."
"For Which It Stands" is a somber image: a small flag poked in the ground among gravestones at the Washington State Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake, while "One Nation" is poignant in a different way. It shows a brown-skinned woman in an elaborately embroidered headscarf at a citizenship swearing-in ceremony. She is framed by a flag on the left and a U.S. marshal on her right, in between her and the judge presiding over the proceedings, suggesting authoritarian power — the uniform, the gun, the macho man in mirror sunglasses — but also the commitment to ensuring newly minted citizens are safeguarded.
The marshal was actually there to protect the judge, Heywood says, but multiple interpretations are not only possible but welcomed.
"Art has a chance, if we give it a chance, to help us reach beyond communication and words," Heywood says.
Using photography to promote reflection and communication is an extension of her ministry, says Heywood, who has served as pastor of Veradale United Church of Christ since 2014.
"We're a very diverse group, where 'all' really means all," Heywood says. "Not only are you welcome here, you are welcome to be honest here and honest about who you are and where you are on your spiritual journey."
Heywood often pairs her photographs with the hymns sung at Veradale United Church of Christ.
"Putting the hymns with the images that are local, that describe what is being sung in the hymns just adds a deeper reflection to what we're talking about," says Heywood, who has also freelanced for The Fig Tree newspaper and still contributes to the nonprofit Spokane Faith and Values (FVS News).
Heywood's reverence for the flag and her interest in photography both date to childhood.
"It must have been Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom or the Disney nature shows that made it so that I wanted to do photography," says Heywood, whose first camera was a Kodak Instamatic.
"The important part of a camera like that is you really have to think before you take the picture because you only got 12 or 24 images that you can take," Heywood says.
While Heywood fine-tuned her compositional skills as a child, she also learned respect for the flag, both as a public school student and at home. Her father, an Air Force veteran and later a police officer, installed a flagpole in front of the family residence and taught his children flag etiquette.
Enshrined into law in 1943, the U.S. Flag Code notes that the flag should never "be used as wearing apparel, bedding or drapery" and damaged flags should be disposed of properly.
A weather-beaten flag is precisely what inspired "The Pledge of Allegiance" series, Heywood says.
For an image she titled, "Indivisible," Heywood captured an unassuming little flag, the kind you might get at a parade or buy in a convenience store, attached to a dowel and zip-tied to a post.
It's severely battered, "but the union is solid," Heywood says, using the formal name for the dark blue field and nine rows of white stars that represent the not-always United States of America.
Her first idea for the series was an exhibit around the words, "Can this be mended?" She now envisions "The Pledge of Allegiance" as a traveling exhibit, perhaps including attendees' responses to the imagery.
Heywood has been working with Gonzaga University Professor Kristine F. Hoover, a past director of the Gonzaga Center for the Study of Hate, where in 2023, Heywood spoke about the work of faith leaders and leaders of conscience using the arts to break through societal divisions in the Pacific Northwest, she says.
"And I think about that for our nation," she adds. "How can we mend our relationships, and mend our civility, and mend our union?"
The Pledge of Allegiance • Through Nov. 30; open Fri 4-7 pm and Sat 10 am-3 pm • Free • Gonzaga University Urban Arts Center • 125 S. Stevens St. • gonzaga.edu/gonzaga-university-urban-arts-center
