Time to schedule a visit to Bridget Kennedy Project Space – or put my Zoom artist talk in the calendar.
If you’re far away, come say hi over Zoom next weekend – Sat the 12th of Sept at 12:00 midday Sydney time and at:
– Friday 11th
7 p.m.: Seattle
10 p.m.: Pittsburgh
– Saturday 12th
7:30 a.m.: India
10 a.m.: Perth
11 a.m.: Korea
12 p.m.: Melbourne
2 p.m.: New Zealand
As you can probably tell, the rows and arms on the rack were made of two gauges of steel rod, the ones that made up the Row works are about 6mm diameter, while the Arm works come in at around 4mm diameter. The sides are of a robust steel tube of approx. 2mm wall thickness, and the top – the sign slot – is made of neatly welded steel C-section, as is the stabiliser bar welded to the lower section.
All of it is painted outside, the rows and arms before assembly, though there are rust patches at some places of wear. The way the rows meet the tube at each end is through a hole in the tube. This design ‘feature‘ meant that the row/arm combos could be held by their ‘going into the tube ends’ as they were painted. This hinge also allowed the row/arm combos to move (the second row bar, below the hinge bar, limited movement to only upwards), so the whole unit could be shipped relatively flat-packed. The ends of the rod that had been inside the tube showed visible fade out of the the green spray, and were all rusted, though to less than 1mm deep. Thus on 3 of the neckpieces there are at least two distinctive 2.5cm/1″ rusted sections (polished yes, but still distinctively brown in colour), a result of this manufacture/construction method.
In terms of pulling it apart, releasing the rows from the main frame, like everything else, was done with my trusty jewellers saw. The measurements of each piece were calculated before I started cutting, so once I’d marked the hinge row sections, I’d saw through the rod at the mark closest to the right-hand-side (cos I’m a righty and doing it left would mean the rack ‘arm’ closest to me would get in the way) and pop out the right-most tail before pulling the rest of the rod, all arms still attached, from the left-hand side of the rack.
The whole row-arm sections were a little unwieldy at the bench at first but they were fairly rapidly deconstructed and kept in their groupings. Gradually each arm was removed to make a work = 12 ARM neckpieces, and each row made a work = 6 ROW neckpieces.