"What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving
How express and admirable
In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god
The beauty of the world
The paragon of animals
I have of late
But wherefore I know not
Lost all my mirth
This goodly frame
The earth
Seems to me a sterile promontory
This most excellent canopy
The air-- look you!
This brave o'erhanging firmament
This majestical roof
'Fretted with golden fire
Why it appears no other thing to me
Than a foul and pestilent congregation
Of vapors
What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason..."
Lately, I have been singing parts of this song in my head, and sometimes out loud. The song kept flowing through my mind as I created this art piece. I did not want to make this art, I did not want to focus on negativity, but it would not let me alone. As soon as I saw the gray humanoid line drawing in the Los Angeles Sunday Times, the idea for this piece came into my head. The article accompanying the photograph was about automation and it appeared in the Business section of the paper, but the contortion of the figure suggested something else entirely to me. I saw it sometime after Passover, after the shootings at the Chabad synagogue in San Diego County, California on April 27, 2019.
"What a piece of work is Man" Eco Art by mayah(c)2019; 12" X 11" mixed media: cut-out istock photo image from the Los Angeles Times Sunday edition newspaper enhanced with ink pen and acrylic/paper "dots; acrylic on unbleached wax paper, art paper background, non-VOC acrylic glaze
Traditionally, Memorial Day commemorates all service men and women who have died in military service for the United States. Yet this art piece memorializes ALL who have died by gun violence, whether in war, in mass shootings, school shootings, shootings at places of worship, shootings by religious or political extremists or mentally ill individuals, shootings in the act of committing crimes, shootings of or by police officers, shootings by suicide, shootings by accident, shootings during political conflict and social unrest...it is about all of those who die by guns, and it is about all of those who wield guns, and it is about all of those broken-hearted family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances who have lost someone to guns, and it is about all of those horror-and-grief-stricken family members and friends of the shooters, and it is about all of those who sanction the use of guns, and it is about all of those who work to control the use of guns, and it is about all of those who manufacture guns, making money off of death, and it is about all of those who turn their heads away at the awful destructiveness of guns and violence and war in all of its myriad forms, and wring their hands in despair... In other words, it is about all of us.
*Excerpt from the song "What a piece of work is man" from the play "Hair" 1968.
Songwriters: Galt Mac Dermot / Gerome Ragni / James Rado: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&channel=tus&q=what+a+piece+of+work+is+man+hair+lyrics
Words in the song from Hamlet, Act II, Scene II, by William Shakespeare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_piece_of_work_is_a_man