So for about two years I worked on these constructions and Marine Works was one of the first. . . . It was really started in ’59 but it assumed its present character in ’60. This piece was a loading ramp and I stripped the metal flanges off the top and the bottom heavy metal pieces, which in other words trucks and so forth would be pushed right up over that and that’s why it’s broken in the middle. I had nothing to do with creating this particular form, I merely used what I found and I might add that my, my first introduction in New York was in a show called New Forms and New Media [Martha Jackson Gallery, June 6–24, 1960], which emphasized assemblage, and this is an assemblage actually. The hole in the middle is just from 50 years of, of use and wear and tear on this particular, on this loading ramp. All my constructions are based on this found aspect which has no relation whatsoever to, to my paintings.
— Robert Indiana
Excerpt from “Richard Stankiewicz and Robert Indiana,” interview by Jan van der Marck, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, October 21, 1963.