As a tribute to the month that kicked off with the Labor Day holiday, the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym is keeping workers in focus this month. The community studio space, which operates like a gym and grants artists access to a range of equipment and classes on a membership basis, is highlighting some of the tools that workers use every day – though not the kind you’ll find in a tool box. Throughout September, this Knight Arts grantee is displaying “Sweat and Blood,” an exhibit by Brian Wagner and Steven Earl Weber that showcases the actual work attire of a number of skilled laborers.

Brian Wagner and Steven Earl Weber, “Promise for the Next.”

Wagner and Weber take many cues from blue-collar workers. The many steel, wood and masonry structures we utilize every day are often things we take for granted. How frequently do average people pause to consider how the house they sleep in was built to keep them safe and dry? We only take note of our plumbing, for the most part, when something goes wrong, and for good reason. That means those hands that labored in our stead did quality work.

In September, the nation dedicates a Monday and an extended weekend to these often overlooked laborers, but the two artists in “Sweat and Blood” decided to take it a step further. By directly contacting a few of these workers – house painters, coal miners and oil riggers, to name a few – the pair acquired the well-worn work clothing that itself tends to go unnoticed as a tool of the trade. (And they replaced these items, of course.)

Upon thinking of tools, we might consider the traditional ones: hammers, screwdrivers, maybe a saw – but these implements represent only a small portion of the items used in any given workforce; the tools that are ubiquitous are those that are worn. In a work called “Promise for the Next,” four different pairs of work boots climb a ladder in an upward march toward progress. The hope for tomorrow is inherent in the labor of those that keep the well-oiled machine of society running smoothly.

Brian Wagner and Steven Earl Weber, “Workers Shrine.”

For the piece “Workers Shrine,” we find the paint-covered pants of a house painter paired with a shipyard worker’s shirt beneath glass. Appearing almost like priceless objects in a museum, these objects seem at odds with what we might expect to find in an art setting, but these garments provide a narrative to the anonymous workmanship that is all around us. These are real artifacts from contemporary individuals that do work in the world we live in, and that alone is certainly worth our attention.

“Sweat and Blood” will be on display through Sept. 25.