When Levi Strauss created his first work pants for Gold Rush workers in 1873, he fastened his stitches and buttonholes with hard, brass buttons and rivets for strength. Ever since, these brass denim appendages have symbolized the toughness of the American worker. So when the
Fairmount Park Art Association approached Irish artist John Kindness to create a monument to Philadelphia's role in U.S. labor rights history, Kindness created seven brass work button tables, each representing a famous moment in Philadelphia labor history.
The monument, unveiled at Elmwood Park in Southwest Philadelphia last Friday, is part of a city-wide movement called New Landmarks, an effort to involve local citizens in the process of creating public art projects. When asked at various community meetings what sort of piece would best represent the Elmwood Park neighborhood, the vastly blue-collar Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood asked for a monument to the working man, to celebrate the history and the sacrifice of labor unions in the U.S.
"In Elmwood Park, they were very clear that they wanted to honor the working class because this particular park had actually been created for workers in industry because Westinghouse and General Electric and Hog Island Shipyard were all right there," says FPAA Executive Director Penny Balkin Bach.
Each button table was molded out of brass and made to honor a famous event in history. Working with the Friends of Elmwood Park, Kindness, the son of a Belfast shipyard worker, created each table to be not only an urban history lesson but to make the park a gathering place for working people once again.
"These tables call attention to issues that are still going on today around the United States and across the world," says Balkin Bach. "It really calls attention to the really groundbreaking work and the debt that we all have to unions over the course of these many years."
Source: Penny Balkin Bach, FPAA
Writer: John Steele