"Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio." Hamlet's words (which are part of a much more elaborate speech), uttered in a graveyard while he holds the skull of a court jester he knew as a child, are well-known as a meditation on the fragility of life. The image of Hamlet holding the skull is used in many humorous contexts, making the words even more famous. Is it the powerful image of a skull, something dead and revolting, in the hands of something so full of life that piques our innermost fears and cannot satisfy our curiosity about the eventual death of us all? And what is it about the physical pieces of us we only see in death, our skull and bones, that we have embraced as images of horror and disgust...and awe?
Materials: painted resin skull, plastic lace, red wooden disk spacer, carved bone bead, burgundy and brown seed beads, gray and ivory bugle beads, rusted wire