Chris Sharpe
Hum-205
Mark Gainey
The Human Experience
05/20/2015

This piece of artwork relates to the human experience of emotion. The emotions that this piece really speaks to are love, loss, pain, and heartbreak. As the skeleton pines over the heart, and the artists writes the word whimper to show the emotion and distraught that the skeleton is feeling, one can begin to see the pain and heartbreak that the skeleton is in. This allows the viewers to relate and think about the experiences of love, loss, pain and heartbreak they have fel in their own lives. Whether it be the death of someone, in which the artwork would be related to and the person would see the skeleton saying he couldn’t do anything to help the person. However, it can also relate to heartbreak. The people that relate the piece to heartbreak will envision themselves as the skeleton and feeling as if there heart had been ripped out and they feel as if they will never get it back, hence the dead skeleton. For me the experience that I see and can relate this artwork to is the death of my stepmother a few years ago. This human experience was important in my life, because it reminds me of the first time I have ever lost anyone really close to me, and I felt heartbreak, pain, and like my heart had been ripped out of my chest and put right in front of me to make me feel the pain even worse. My stepmother and I were really close, and I was young, so it felt as if a piece of my heart was literally gone. I not only relate this artwork to this human experience, but I also can envision myself as being the skeleton in the piece. I was that skeleton, I couldn’t fathom or figure out why this had happened to me, to her, and I felt lost, I felt pain that I had never felt before, and again, it felt as if my heart had been torn from my chest and I didn’t know if I would ever get it back. I believe that this artwork expresses the social values of being able to see when someone is in pain, when someone feels heartbreak. This piece helps people envision a time in their lives when they felt the same way, and shows that they aren’t the only ones that have ever felt like this. It also has cultural values in that it shows that even though we have different cultural beliefs, we all feel the same pain, and heartbreak, and loss. It shows a skeleton whimper over a heart, which to me speaks to the fact