The Philadelphia Wireman is an unidentified artist whose works — about 1200 of them — were found abandoned in a Philadelphia alley in the late 1970s. Each sculpture is made of miscellaneous objects bound together with wire; materials include “plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewelry.”
Nothing is known for certain about the Wireman’s identity (thus the “man” part of their nickname is a guess), although a visitor to the Fleischer-Ollman gallery, which houses some of the pieces, claimed to recognize them as the work of an elderly Black man he had seen making them around 1970.
According to the gallery:
“Heavy with associations — anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural — to wrapped detritus, the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfill the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to Classical antiquity sculptures, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects.”
It’s one thing to note the physical resemblance of the sculptures to these other forms of art, but I think there’s a danger of attributing a certain motive or state of mind to an unknown artist, especially one who may never have intended their work to be exhibited. I find the Wireman’s sculptures beautiful and fascinating, and that’s all I know about them.
You can view pictures of more sculptures here.