We Uplift That
We Uplift That
Jennifer Drinkwater, We Uplift That, acrylic and tempera on wood panel, 36” x 36”, 2022.
We Uplift That arrives wired and ready to hang. My genius husband Aaron Swanson carefully crafts each panel with high-quality wood, mounting a smooth plywood surface onto a sturdy, mitred wooden frame that provides depth and support to the painting. The sides of the panel are sanded and finished for smoothness.
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Twenty percent of profits support the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, an organization that exists “to tell the story of Emmett Till in a way that moves people forward. We use art and storytelling to help process past pains and imagine new possibilities for the future.” Learn more at https://www.emmett-till.org/.
The community conversation that inspired We Uplift That….
In late 2019, I interviewed Benjamin Saulsberry, the Public Engagement and Museum Education Director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center (ETIC), and this conversation, and the work of the Center, inspired this series of paintings for The What’s Good Project.
“In the past few years, we've been able to host summer programs and summer fellowship programs where the youth use photo-documentaries as their medium for storytelling while also learning a little bit more about the civil rights movement. More specifically, the fact that the Civil Rights Movement wasn't just Martin King, Rosa Parks, and some of the folks that made the history books. The Civil Rights Movement was about quote-unquote, "regular folk," black and white that worked together and fought this system or at least tried to fight against the system and didn't get anything for it, other than the future impact as it relates to folks getting the right to vote, and things being at least a little bit better than they were.
So, we uplift that because it's important for all people to know that you being the only one very rarely means that no one else cares. And if you care, do your best to find other folks that care, and work together, and do the best you can to cultivate change in your community. And if you're consistent, you stand a chance of actually making a lasting difference wherever you are, no matter how bad it's been. And so that’s where we are at present. We're still trying to find ways to keep this thing going. We hope in the relatively near future to get National Park designation. We'll see.” - Benjamin Saulsberry
