About
This is an old university project that I had some fun with. The premise of the assignment was to take something and find a way to fabricate it in sheet metal. I thought a punching bag would be a respectable amount of challenge for a pretty funny end result.
I was able to find a beat-up, used punching bag. I deconstructed it, so that I could take the exterior material panelling and transfer it to my sheet steel. With these shapes, I was then able to rebuild the cylindrical form at a 1:1 scale without much trouble. While forming the cylindrical body, I quickly realized that I needed some texture in order to make the form more identifiable as a punching bag rather than just a metal cylinder.
I spent a good couple of weeks chipping away at it, beating it from the inside out with a plastic round mallet to make it appear ‘stuffed’. I had the thought that I could try to put a bigger punch-like dent somewhere in the body, but I thought it would be funnier to have an inviting, un-punched steel punching bag.
I fabricated some faux straps and a chain for fastening some additional hanging hardware, and it turned out to look pretty convincing once I got it all welded together. The sculpture was quite well recieved and everyone I spoke to about it seemed much more interested in discussing the object through lenses of gender identity as opposed to my intended ‘looney-tunes’ level of object comedy. But I guess that’s art school for ya.
It was shown publically for a couple weeks at Gallery 1313 – which is now coincidentally right in my neighborhood. There are tales that someone tried to give it a good smack while it was on public display. I feel like some artists may be appalled by something like that – but dude, it’s a punching bag made of steel. I’m not worried about it.
Process Documentation
