My new constructions, (and I guess I can’t call them constructions), my new pieces of wood are–I’ve had these columns for some time; they were originally the masts of old sailing ships, and you can still see the worn areas where the iron rings that held them together were once fitted onto. Then they became columns for these warehouses that were built after the fire of 1835. And then as the buildings were demolished I acquired several of these columns. I had to, unfortunately, had to cut them in half to get them into my loft; they were once nine feet tall. And I’m working now almost exclusively on them. They will not be assemblages in that there is nothing, there is no other material being added to them except words painted around the perimeter of the columns.
— Robert Indiana
Richard Brown Baker, Oral history interview with Robert Indiana, New York, September 12 and November 7, 1963, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., pp. 140–41.