The text in this papercut comes from Genesis 4:10, when God is talking to Cain after Cain has killed Abel and then said to God “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God responds, “What have you done?! The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.”

The words “min ha-adamah” or “from the ground” are repeated over and over going down into the earth, as the blood drips down into them. If you look closely, you can see a small drop of blood hanging from Cain’s left hand.

As I was creating this papercut, I was thinking about how God might react if God were talking to the leaders of Israel these days, as they have been spilling the blood of thousands of innocents for over a year in Gaza. I imagine God being just as upset, angry, and outraged as when Cain was discovered having killed his brother.

Structurally, creating the effect I wanted with the two layers of paper was quite a challenge. I wanted to have just one piece of red paper, and I wanted it to show only through the letters in the right places. But I also wanted the letters to be as large and as close together as possible, so fill up the white area of the “earth” with brown. Those small spaces made it very hard to keep all the red connected to itself. As you can see in one of the thumbnails, there are some very very thin strings of paper holding all the red together.