Here is an attempt to describe one of the objects from AFAM’s Collection attributed to the “Philadelphia Wireman”: A yellow hinged ruler with both ends broken off is suspended in a nest of rusted wire that has been wrapped and twisted to form loops and spirals. The wire also holds a single black arm from a pair of eyeglasses, one of its tiny screws still intact. Another length of wire, less rusted, winds through one of the holes in a lilac button, securing it next to the ruler. The overall shape is dynamic, angular. Part of the ruler is nearly perpendicular to the arm from the glasses, and lines of wire trace around the cluster of objects like lines drawn in the air.

A shared language of materials and process is recognizable across the approximately one thousand such objects that were found, in the late 1970s, in trash bags in a south Philadelphia neighborhood. Custom-built stands now accompany some of these, for exhibition purposes, but the way that the maker known as the Philadelphia Wireman interacted with, stored, or used these objects remains entirely unknown.

Brooke Wyatt, 2024

Text written as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).