Refining Smash The Patriarchy
Photographs 1-2 show the sanding process of the supports. Because of the angle of the supports, I carved the drips so that they were also at an angle to follow the line of gravity.
*Photographs 1-2 were taken on 27th March 2017.
By this date, my finger tips were red raw from hand sanding. Throughout my artistic practice, I've found that hand sanding enables me to get sharper more precise strokes around the drips than using sanding blocks. However, it is a method that is a lot more painful!
Photographs 3-4 show how many plasters I had to apply to not only cover the sore areas but to keep the plasters stuck on whilst I continued to sand. I also found that these plasters provided a kind of protectiveness against the sandpaper that was skintight, as gloves would be too loose and I wouldn't be able to get the sharp precise strokes that I needed to when sanding the drips.
*Photographs 3-4 were taken on 1st April 2017.
Photograph 5 was taken during the process of sanding the plywood base puddle. After Ross and I had cut out the puddle shape using a jigsaw, I used an orbital sander to round the edges. As plywood is a sheet material made from layers of wood glued together, there are sometimes tiny gaps in places within the sheet. Some tiny gaps or holes appeared as I was sanding down the edges, so I applied some wood filler to fill them in. By using wood filler, I could keep the general aesthetic the same and also strengthen the sheet by covering the weak points and preventing any potentiality of the gaps getting bigger.
*Photograph 5 was taken on 7th April 2017.
By this date, we had managed to source a two handed wooden sledge hammer with a rubber mallet head. Called a Paving Maul, this hammer is intended for bedding heavy duty slabs and driving fence posts. As such, it was too heavy to use for a high striker game in its original form. Therefore, we proceeded to cut away inches from the rubber mallet head until it felt like an appropriate weight. Eventually, the shape of the rubber mallet head turned into the shape of a sledge hammer head. I also carved a few drips into the bottom of the wooden handle, not all over the handle as to make it uncomfortable to hold, but enough to make the wooden handle fit in with the melting wooden theme.
Instead of cutting a splash shape out of a tyre rubber, as originally planned, I made use of one of the cut offs from the rubber mallet head. In photograph 6, I drew an outline of a splash onto the rubber cut off. The rubber cut off was approximately an inch in depth and three inches in diameter, which was the perfect size to fit onto the end of the lever without causing any obstruction to the movement of the lever. Photograph 7 depicts the carving process of the rubber splash. Having never sculpted rubber before, I experimented first using similar tools from when I sculpted the wooden splash. I found that the Dremel high speed cutter worked well and produced precise carvings. I began by carving out a dip in the middle of the rubber pad, then I carved out the drips along the edge in an outwards and upwards direction. The idea was to present a rubber splash, in place of the rubber target pad, for participants to aim to hit the middle dip of the splash; as though the hammer hitting the rubber caused the rubber to splash.
*Photographs 6-7 were taken on 8th April 2017.
