''Glove Cycle'' is a 1984 public art installation by Mags Harries, located throughout the

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (abbreviated MBTA and known colloquially as "the T") is the public agency responsible for operating most public transportation services in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. The MBTA transit network in ...

Porter subway and

commuter rail Commuter rail, or suburban rail, is a passenger rail transport service that primarily operates within a metropolitan area, connecting commuters to a central city from adjacent suburbs or commuter towns. Generally commuter rail systems are con ...

station in

Porter Square Porter Square is a neighborhood in Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, located around the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Somerville Avenue, between Harvard and Davis Squares. The Porter Square station serves both the MBTA Red Li ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. The artwork consists of 54 separate bronze pieces and was created with a budget of

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

30,000.

Sculpture

''Glove Cycle'' is a sculptural installation of 54 separate bronze sculptures of gloves located throughout Porter station.Glove Cycle
. Mags Harries & Lajos Héder. Retrieved May, 22, 2012. Individual gloves are located on a

turnstile A turnstile (also called a turnpike, gateline, baffle gate, automated gate, turn gate in some regions) is a form of gate which allows one person to pass at a time. A turnstile can be configured to enforce one-way human traffic. In addition, a t ...

and between the up and down

escalator An escalator is a moving staircase which carries people between floors of a building or structure. It consists of a motor-driven chain of individually linked steps on a track which cycle on a pair of tracks which keep the step tread horizo ...

s. Small piles of gloves are located at the bottom of the escalators and on the inbound platform, while other gloves are embedded in the floor of both platforms as well as the mezzanine.Arts on the Line:Porter Square MBTA Station
. Cambridge Arts Council. 2002. Accessed October 12, 2010 The gloves are arranged, some in small vignettes, to have different stories and emotions connected to them. Richard Wolkomir of '' Smithsonian Magazine'' explains that the first gloves one approaches in the station are "a big glove giving birth to a little glove", and that "Some gloves have two thumbs, or only three fingers. One large glove extends a finger toward a smaller glove, like a caricature of

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...

's Jehovah transmitting life to Adam on the Sistine ceiling."Wolkomir, Richard
Sculpture in the subways? Is there a better place for it?
'' Smithsonian Magazine''. April 01, 1987. Retrieved June 2, 2012. Robert O. Boorstin from ''

The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...

'' adds that there are gloves "in piles, gripping rails, pushing imaginary buttons—as a constant image that the passenger follows from one point of the station to another". Boorstin, Robert O
Take the Red Line ... Please. Artists on the Line at the Carpenter Center through March 9
''

''. February 26, 1979. Retrieved June 2, 2012. Mags Harries explains that the gloves she crafted "are anthropomorphic objects with many character possibilities and by their multiplication, take on a life form that might be analogous to the people movement in the subway." Robert O. Boorstin claims that this philosophy and explanation are "somewhat extravagant."

History

''Glove Cycle'' was created as a part of the MBTA and the Cambridge Arts Council's "

Arts on the Line Arts on the Line was a program devised to bring art into the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) subway stations in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Arts on the Line was the first program of its kind in the United States and became th ...

" program. This first of its kind program was devised to bring art into the MBTA's planned Northwest Extension of the Red Line

subway station A metro station or subway station is a station for a rapid transit system, which as a whole is usually called a "metro" or "subway". A station provides a means for passengers to purchase tickets, board trains, and evacuate the system in the ...

s in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and became a model for similar drives for public art across the country. This installation was one of 20 artworks created for this program, out of over 400 proposals submitted by artistsNesbitt, Lois E
Arts on the Line: Art for Public Transit Spaces At the Hayden Gallery, MIT, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge Through March 16

Harvard Crimson The Harvard Crimson are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Harvard College. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2013, there were 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at ...

. February 15, 1980. Accessed May 22, 2012 for artworks spread out across five different newly created subway stations. The first 20 artworks, including this one, were completed with a total cost of $695,000 USD, or one-half of one percent of the total construction cost of the Red Line Northwest Extension.Red Line Northwest Extension Pamphlet page 5
The Davis Square Tiles Project. Accessed October 10, 2010 The cost of this particular sculpture was $30,000. Gloves was not the first theme that Harries considered for her subterranean artwork. Initially her concept revolved around bronze tree roots appearing to come through the walls and into the stations. This idea was turned down by the architects of Porter Station for bringing attention to the fact that the station is deep underground. Harries stated, "The whole philosophy of subway stations, it turns out, is to make them seem as un-underground as possible," something the tree roots idea would be the exact opposite of. The next theme she considered was to create a flock of sheep-shaped turnstiles. This concept fell to the wayside as the snow from a blizzard in Boston began to melt. Harries began to find lost gloves emerging from the snow. She said that, "They were wet, compacted, squashed—really beautiful!" These lost items gave her the inspiration for her new sculptural theme, gloves.

References

External links

{{commons category
Mags Harries website
Outdoor sculptures in Massachusetts Bronze sculptures in Massachusetts Arts on the Line 1984 sculptures