blue-collar blues series

made possible by 

 Edwardsville City Hall & Edwardsville Arts Center

~

mary berry artist statement

about the Blue-Collar Blues series

Blue-Collar Blues is a body of work centered on labor that quietly sustains daily life.

Rather than depicting jobs or machinery, the work focuses on what remains—tools, clothing, marks, systems, and ground—after the worker has moved on.

Created during a period of infrastructure renewal in Edwardsville,

the series acknowledges the men and women whose work exists largely out of sight

and without recognition. Water lines, sewer systems, roads, and maintenance structures function because someone showed up to build and maintain them, often unseen.

These works resist spectacle and explanation. They avoid hero narratives in favor of collective effort, shared responsibility, and material evidence. The presence of labor is felt in what functions, what endures, and what improves.

Blue-Collar Blues is not commentary or protest. It is recognition.

Our daily lives rest on work we rarely see and names we seldom know.


blue-collar recognition

My work Blue-Collar Blues series explores labor, systems, and the quiet human presence embedded in everyday life. I am drawn to what is often overlooked—process, wear, absence, and the structures that allow daily life to function without calling attention to themselves.

Working primarily in mixed media and abstraction, I focus less on representation and more on evidence: tools after use, clothing without bodies, routes without travelers, surfaces shaped by time and repetition. These elements point to human effort without depicting the individual, allowing the work to remain collective rather than personal.

At the center of my practice is an interest in how meaning emerges through use. Work becomes invisible once it succeeds; systems fade into the background when they function as intended. Infrastructure, maintenance, and care are rarely noticed precisely because they are doing their job. I see this disappearance not as loss, but as a condition worth examining.

I approach materials with restraint, allowing erosion, layering, and incompletion to remain visible. I am less interested in resolution than in responsibility—what holds, what supports, and what endures over time. My work resists spectacle and explanation, favoring quiet recognition and reflection.

Across my practice, I return to the idea that presence is often revealed through absence, and that much of what sustains us does so without acknowledgment. What remains is an invitation to notice the human effort embedded in what functions, what endures, and what improves.


my edwardsville connection



I lived in Edwardsville for a short time—from 1980 to 1982—but it was a season that quietly shaped the rest of my life.


My husband was completing his bachelor’s degree in computer science at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and I worked at the university’s Speech Pathology and Audiology Center as an administrative assistant.   We were young, raising our children, and I was expecting our third.  We didn’t have much money, but we had what we needed - and, more importantly, we had access.


We rode our bikes back and forth to work and school on the bike path daily. That path mattered more than I understood at the time. It made it possible to live simply, to move through the day without excess, and to keep going when resources were limited. The tree-lined streets, the gentle hills, and the rhythm of the town created a sense of steadiness. 


Looking back, what stands out most is how much was quietly working in our favor. Education was within reach. Employment was accessible. The city’s infrastructure - its paths, buildings, and systems - held us without fanfare. Edwardsville didn’t ask us to be anything other than where we were. It allowed a young family to move forward, one day at a time.


At the time, it felt like life simply unfolding. Years later, I understand it differently. I see how much depends on place - on public systems, shared resources, and thoughtful planning that rarely calls attention to itself. I see how certain moments in life are not defined by abundance, but by enough.


Those years in Edwardsville remain some of the best times of our lives, not because they were easy, but because they were possible.


This story is not unique. Many lives pass through places like this - studying, working, raising children, hoping. Edwardsville was one of those places for us.

And for that, I remain deeply grateful.

art is a mirror — sometimes

it reflects what we know,

and sometimes

it shows us what we’ve

forgotten to feel.

Mary Berry with glasses, necklace, and bracelet, hand on chin, looking away, with flower backdrop.