
“A Celebration of Women” at Salt Lake Community College’s South City Campus, 1575 S. State Street, Salt Lake City. Image by Shawn Rossiter.
Jann Haworth has not run out of women to celebrate, whether in Salt Lake City, Utah, or in Davos, Switzerland. Her “Celebration of Women” mural, initially put together digitally during the pandemic and printed on vinyl for outdoor display, has now been collaged into a massive mural at Salt Lake Community College’s South City Campus. And a portion of her ongoing “Work in Progress” mural is on exhibit this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“A Celebration of Women” was originally conceived in 2018, when then-Zion Bank president and CEO Scott Anderson commissioned Haworth and her son, Alex Johnstone, to create the mural for Salt Lake City’s Dinwoody Building. Inspired by Haworth’s “Work in Progress” project, a series of ongoing murals celebrating the achievements of women and begun in 2016, “A Celebration of Women” was commissioned to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States by highlighting the achievement of Utah women in various arenas: culture, politics, sports and more. For both projects, Haworth invited professional artists and amateurs from her community workshops to create stenciled portraits of the women being celebrated, assembling them into a group portrait reminiscent of the Sgt. Pepper’s album cover she created with Peter Blake in 1967.
Plans for “A Celebration of Women” took on new dimensions as the pandemic halted in-person gatherings. “Rather than keeping the creative base solely in Utah, I took the view that the world was locked in and everyone bound by the fears of the pandemic,” says Haworth. “It was a dire unity, but I decided to do a wide outreach. I contacted people that I knew in Australia, Italy, Belgium, Wales, Scotland, England, Austria, as well as California, Texas, South Carolina, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. All said yes to doing a stencil for the mural.” The artists created their stencil wherever they were located and emailed an image to Haworth. The result was a monumental mural, painstakingly collaged together digitally by Johnstone. Printed on vinyl, the mural has been hanging on the east side of the Dinwoody Building in downtown Salt Lake City since 2020 (see here).

“A Celebration of Women,” on the east side of the Dinwoody Building, 37 W. 100 South, Salt Lake City, January, 2025. Image by Steve Coray.
This time around, there was a lot more gluing. In the summer of 2024, the project was reimagined for a spacious atrium at Salt Lake Community College’s (SLCC) South City campus. The actual stencil images were physically collaged together over several months by Liberty Blake, Haworth’s daughter and a noted collage artist. With the co-ordination of SLCC’s James Walton and help from UDAM’s Hannah Barrett, the new mural, made from paper on panels, has been transformed into a massive wall of art inside SLCC, creating an awe-inspiring display of creativity and community.
This second iteration of the mural, titled “Utah Women 2020,” comprises 35 collaged panels, including 28 panels that are 4 feet by 8 feet and 8 panels that measure 28 inches by 8 feet. In total, 365 portraits of Utah women were contributed by approximately 200 artists and non-artists. The mural serves as a striking tribute not only to the history of women in Utah but also to the collaborative spirit of art in challenging times.
“The mural is a snapshot of an extraordinary time,” Haworth says. “Pandemic, Marches for Black Lives Matter. It did not pass our attention that 2020 was also the 100-year anniversary of the end of the Spanish Flu epidemic and likewise near the Tulsa Massacre 100-year mark.”
Like “Work in Progress,” this mural is open-ended. “The mural is only a sampler of the character of the women of Utah,” Haworth says. “There are three blank heads so that people can photograph the mural and put whosoever they wish into a print of it.”
The mural was unveiled quietly in the fall and has been enjoyed by students and faculty for more than a semester. A formal unveiling will be held on Thursday, March 6, 4 – 7 p.m., with a short program at 6 p.m. (rsvp here).
Meanwhile, in Switzerland, two new panels of Haworth’s “Work in Progress” mural are being exhibited at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Jan. 20 – 24. Since 2016, Haworth has led community workshops to encourage artists and amateurs alike to produce stencil portraits for “Work in Progress,” a continuing mural project in collaboration with artist Liberty Blake that celebrates the accomplishments of women throughout history. Panels for the mural have been exhibited locally and internationally. Seven panels were purchased by the National Portait Gallery in London in 2023. WEF’s head of arts and culture, Joseph Fowler, saw them there and commissioned Haworth and Blake to make two new panels to be exhibited in Davos. “This appeared out of the blue,” Haworth says. “We are still in shock.”
All but one of the artists who contributed to the two panels are from Utah, including Gary Barton, Mike Whiting, Al Denyer, Dan Gerhart, Joe Ostraff, Vince Johnson and James Walton. The commission was meant to be related to the WEF’s annual gender gap report and include images of women who have been associated with the WEF’s arts and culture programming. Individuals depicted in the panel include Misty Copeland; a celebrated African American ballet dancer. Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani activist for girls’ education and Nobel Prize laureate; Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner; Dolores Huerta, Latina labor leader and civil rights activist; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice; and poet, writer, and activist Maya Angelou.
- Davos panel of “Work in Progress.” Courtesy of Jann Haworth.
- Davos panel of “Work in Progress.” Courtesy of Jann Haworth.

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.
Categories: Visual Arts
Well, just WOW!