Lift Up Your Eyes Upon the Day Breaking for You Collage by Christine So

Collage: cyanotype, Monotype on Paper, Wood.

This small collage is part of the same series that Saatchi Art featured In it’s April 27, 2020 'New This Week' collection. It is the third in my 'Night and Day' series of collages using my hand-printed cyanotypes. When I made this in early May of 2020, I was thinking of the coranavirus pandemic and the metaphor of night and day, of suffering and relief. After George Floyd's murder in late May, a line from a poem by Maya Angelou, which is the title of this work, spoke to me. The way in which Americans of all colors and ages came together in the streets nationwide to demand justice and change gives one hope.

"Lift Up Your Eyes Upon the Day Breaking for You" is a line from Maya Angelou's poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" which she read nearly 30 years ago at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton. The poem speaks about the unspeakable pain inflicted on so many African Americans and Native Americans throughout America's history, words that ring true today in the wake of another police killing of another black American. Yet the end of her poem is full of optimism:

Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

The artist's proceeds from the sale of this piece will go to Fair Fight, an organization focused on free and fair elections in the U.S. It was founded by Georgia democrat Stacey Abrams with a mission to end Republicans' voter suppression tactics and elect more progressive voices to public office.

About the 8 x 8 inch piece itself: The sides of the wooden cradle board are painted pale gold. The papers used in the collage are heavy 100% acid-free watercolor paper which will not yellow with age. The surface is permanently sealed with a transparent, matte layer of cold wax to protect it.