Philadelphia Public Art @philart.net
Artist: Virginia Maksymowicz
Tools of the Trade
Virginia Maksymowicz,
2022 (installed)
* tools,
map
* inscription:
Tools of the trade is meant to make visible the often invisible role that
railroad workers play in building and maintaining Amtrak's infrastructure.
Artist Virginia Maksymowicz commuted on the Amktrak Keystone Service
for over 25 years, between her home in Philadelphia and Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, where she taught as a professor of sculpture at Franklin and
Marshall College. Maksymowicz credits her time on the train for
producing some of her best thinking, including designing, researching,
and planning many of her artworks.
At the time Tools of the Trade was created, the artist was working
on a series of sculptures involving plaster casts of tools and bones,
matephorically relating them to various structures. It occurred to her that
Amtrak's national route system is another kind of structure, one that
connects north and south, east and west, much like a bodily skeleton
connects heat to toe and hand to hand.
Maksymowicz wanted to represent this structure through casts of the
type of tools that Amtrak workers might use on the job. She collected
vintage tools, railroad spikes and clips; she made silicon molds from
them and cast them into lightweight plastic. Casts
of spikes and bolts suggest mountains, and
S-curved wrenches, calipers and railroad clips
signify water.
* North Waiting Room.
30th Street Station.
Northeast corner, 30th and Market.
* 39.956030,-75.181675 [map] [nearby]
* On the Avenue of Technology tour
* Exhibits: New
* See also:
+wikipedia.org's 30th Street Station page
