"The Cirque Calder can be seen as the start of Calder's interest in both wire sculpture and kinetic art. He maintained a sharp eye with respect to the engineering balance of the sculptures and utilized these to develope the kinetic sculptures Duchamp would ultimately dub as "'mobiles". He designed some of the characters in the circus to perform suspended from a thread. However, it was the mixture of his experiments to develop purely abstract sculpture following his visit with Mondrian that lead to his first truly kinetic sculptures, manipulated by means of cranks and pulleys.
By the end of 1931, he had quickly moved on to more delicate sculptures which derived their motion from the air currents in the room. From this, Calder's true "mobiles" were born. At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Arp to differentiate them from mobiles."
I have an idea for a mobile for my class. I'm going to use liquid polymer clay and mix it with pigments. Then I'm going to spread the liquid on a cookie sheet and bake it. When it cools it will be colorful, flexible polymer. I'll then cut out the shapes for the mobile. I plan on doing this Saturday, so I'll be posting the phases of that process.
Here's a cool site that has all kinds of mobiles (and no doubt will inspire me)!
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