Gary Duehr's Phone Fossil is outside the Holland St side of the Davis Square T stop. The work is based on a sculpture from his series “Relics.” Inside the box is a plaster cast of an old-fashioned Princess phone, “Phone Fossil” is a mini-monument to outdated technology. Mounted on a steel base (12” x 4” x 4”), the presentation is similar to that of a Greek or Roman torso in a museum. By encasing it in a phone box (a very appropriate home), “Phone Fossil” takes on the aura of a saintly relic in a shrine.
And if needed, a live phone is adjacent.
Relics (statement by artist)
"These common household objects--a light bulb, a pill bottle, a paper wad--are transformed by being cast.
The process is much like photography. The object makes an impression, and the resulting cast bears a one-to-one physical relationship with the original, like light that bounces off a subject then through a lens to make a facsimile.
And the choice of everyday subject matter raises the ordinary to a higher level of scrutiny and reverence. It's as if our lives were being excavated eons from now in an archaeological dig, perhaps after an apocalyptic event, and these traces are what is discovered. What do they say about us, and the daily lives we led, the things that mattered to us and that we held in our hands?"