The Story of the finger bone

Here is the backstory to this piece called "Gold". As I was putting it together I decided I wanted to use a real finger bone. I felt it would add a discomforting brevity and remembrance to all those lost in the annals of history. Perhaps help it be remembered as one of those lessons from history where thousands of innocents died for greed of gold ( in light of current claims lobbied against oil rich land). So I went and ordered one from the Bone Room. So I get it in the mail and I feel really queer about it. I call the bone room and find out it was from China originally. I can't open it. It sits on the shelf for several weeks. I feel haunted by it. Who's finger bone was it? Was it from an executed convict, sold by permission of the family, robbed from a grave, what?

One day my friend came over and I asked her to open the package and we look at it and I just can't do it. I can't use it, can't look at it, let alone touch it,can't keep it in the house (my friend took it away). So much for me wanting to make others uncomfortable! I think now if I had used it it would have been too distracting. So I used a chicken bone, and I know what chicken it was because I ate it.

The point of the bone: represents the bones of thousands of women and children still buried in the fields where the camps once stood. Underneath the white woman is a black face because thousands of African women and children died in camps, not because the British thought them hostile, but because they lived and worked on Boer land.

So I even creep myself out with my own artwork sometimes.