SALINA, KANSAS.- The Salina Art Center opened the exhibit Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection on view through August 29. Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection celebrates an amazing variety of 20th-century art that represents or incorporates everyday tools and hardware. The exhibition features sixty-five highlights from the unique holdings of hardware industry pioneer John W. Hechinger, who in 1978 moved the moved the Hechinger Company into new corporate headquarters and began collecting art that focused common tools and hardware.

From a glass hammer to a gracefully designed chair made from a rake, Tools as Art includes elegant and witty sculptures of tools – from common hammers, saws, and wrenches – to machine tools created in wood, glass, metal, and stone. Paintings, prints and photographs depicting tools of all varieties are complemented by constructions of found objects that use familiar forms to create works of imaginative power. Spanning a wide range of styles and themes, the collection honors the commonplace, blurring the lines between form and function and revealing the attachment we have to the everyday tools in our lives.