IndyBar’s new coloring book honors female trailblazers

The Indianapolis Bar Association’s Women in The Law Division is celebrating Hoosier women past and present with a new coloring book designed for young audiences.

“All Rise: Stand-up Women in Hoosier History” celebrates 40 Hoosier women who have made significant contributions to the state and across the globe. Though focused on women in the field of law, the book also features women who have made strides in sports, entrepreneurship, podcasting, and more.

“I’m humbled and honored to be included,” said Karen Bravo, dean of the Indiana University McKinney School of Law. “I think they did a terrific job of not only [including] current, contemporary women in the law, but also looking back through Hoosier history as well.”

Women such as Bravo, the first person of color and second woman to lead the McKinney School of Law, and aviator Amelia Earhart, who once served as an adviser in Purdue University’s aeronautical engineering department, are included in the book to show young Hoosiers, particularly young girls, all they can achieve.

Work on the project began in 2021, when Andrea Ciobanu, a member of the Women in The Law Division, pitched the idea for a fundraising project.

The division’s mission is to extend opportunities to women in the field to achieve professional success. One of the biggest goals of the coloring book is to show young audiences that the heroes they wish to emulate may be right in their backyards.

“We have these perceptions in the media of, for the young children, who their heroines should be, and it would be really nice to uplift our Hoosier women that have accomplished many great things,” Ciobanu said. “And there wasn’t something like this. There wasn’t anything that we could find like this.”

Developing the project took a team of volunteers who drafted a list of potential Hoosier women to be vetted and included. Volunteers spent a significant amount of time reaching out to each woman or, in some cases, their living family members to get permission to use their likeness in the book.

“We tried to include everyone that we could get in touch with, so there wasn’t anything where anybody was really left off the table,” said Rani Amani, an associate at Ice Miller and a member of the team who developed the book.

Bringing the pages to life

One task that proved more difficult for the division was finding an illustrator who could bring the coloring book to life. After the original graphic designer fell through, the team worked to find an artist who could capture the impact of the notable women, while also appealing to the young audience the book is intended for.

Eventually, the group turned to Natalie Marchal, a New York City-based artist who is also the daughter of Marion Superior Court Judge Helen Marchal. Judge Marchal is a former chair of the Women in The Law Division and helped see the project through publication.

Judge Marchal said the division sifted through a few different ideas before landing on the coloring book.

“[The] bottom line was to try to present something to show just a story of strong, accomplished women from Indiana, or with some sort of tie to Indiana, in hopes of showing kids the world of possibilities,” Judge Marchal said.

Natalie Marchal spent the better part of a year illustrating images not just of the 40 women, but for the narrative that ties them all together.

The coloring book tells the story of a young girl named Gabby who goes to the library with her grandmother to do research on a class project about inspirational women in Indiana.

Throughout the story, Gabby learns that not only can she practice law, but she can change it and be successful in other careers thanks to the work of women before her.

When creating illustrations for the book, Natalie Marchal said she strayed from her usual art style to create images that resonated with the audience. The result encapsulates a childlike wonder she and the rest of the committee are incredibly happy with.

“It’s just kind of like a ‘pinch me’ moment for me, but I’m really glad that I helped play a part in trying to make an impact on children’s lives,” Marchal said.

Judge Marchal said it was special to be able to work on the book with her daughter.

“I am so proud of her and blown away by what she was able to create with her drawings,” she said.

A lasting impact

Through the book, the Women in The Law Division is offering Hoosiers of all generations a comprehensive example of how women in the state have changed the landscape of their respective fields.

And for the women in these fields, the community they’ve found with each other is especially important.

“I so value my friendships and colleagues that are women, so I hope women see that in that book. We’re in this together, ladies,” said Fran Watson, who is celebrated in the book as the first Marion County Public Defender and founder of the Wrongful Conviction Clinic at Indiana University.

This representation is also important in careers that don’t always see a female majority, said Olivia Hess, an associate at Clark, Quinn, Moses, Scott & Grahn LLP and a volunteer on the project.

“We’ve got people from kind of all walks of life,” she said. “And I think that that’s just important for that representation aspect of it.”

Team members raved about the opportunity to work on the book, and the feedback they’ve gotten so far. Volunteers said demand for the coloring book has been high. The division already ran out of their first wave of distribution and is working to pull funding together to print more.

Anyone interested in receiving a book can email [email protected].•