These are images of 3d models of the mobile sculptures that I’m working on expanding, with the balance point for each part precisely calculated. Each of these mobile sculptures has an interconnected balance structure throughout, just like an Alexander Calder mobile. The balance of each part is determent by the weight of the parts connected to it. This specific mobile sculpture, for example, is made of 51 balanced parts that are connected to each other, resulting in just one suspension point for the whole sculpture:

One of these mobile sculptures here shown with the precisely calculated balance points (103 points in total):

– See more of my mobile sculptures –

George Rickey, while outlining the early explorations by artists into kinetic art from 1912 to 1932 in his book Constructivism – Origins and Evolution (published in 1967, and to my knowledge, the most wide-ranging and comprehensive book on the subject of Constructivism to date), remarked: “It was Calder who succeeded in securing a place for kinetic art. He started making mobiles twelve years after Gabo’s Manifesto, and his first exhibition of these was in 1932 at the Galérie Maeght in Paris. Although his mobiles have since become famous and popular and have enlarged the limits of art, his style, deriving from painterly concepts, has had little influence on the new generation, especially the more mechanically inclined. Until his stabiles of the last decade, Calder retained a two-dimensional outlook in sculpture devised as outline drawings, often witty, with ingratiating movement added. He seemed indifferent to the wide possibilities of a kinetic art. He discovered a new world but did not explore it.“

To put the idea in different words: Calder’s process began with seeing Piet Mondrian‘s paintings and feeling the impulse to make the static abstract shapes in the paintings move. He translated this idea to his mobiles quite precisely, essentially creating two-dimensional abstract paintings made of a series of flat shapes that move. Most of them only happen to become three-dimensional because these two-dimensional abstract “paintings” (essentially two-dimensional planes made of a series of flat shapes) happen to curve three-dimensionally when moved by air currents. He remained devoted to this approach with his mobiles and veered from it only very rarely, and not far when he did.

In 1962, in a review in Arts Magazine of an exhibit of Calder’s work at Tate [PDF], George Rickey wrote: “The mobile, even if flexible, is two-dimensional, like a drawing on a rubber sheet. The sinuous tracery of each set of wires profiles may sit contrapuntally against the next, but flat against flat. With the parts swinging around a vertical axis, the galaxy occupies space but does not energize it. Calder has run through the permutations of these wire profiles; yet, apart from some perfecting of wire technology, extension and refinement of his vocabulary of shapes (the Arpesque flame forms are the best), and increased size, he shows very little advance in the expressive use of movement in the thirty years since Calderberry Bush [also known as Object with Red Discs, made in 1932 and regarded as Calder’s first mobile sculpture]. It is not the first time that an artist has been confined by his own invention; it happened to Samuel F. B. Morse. The Master of the Catenaries has become the prisoner of the chain he forged.“

To expand Calder’s idea, one could create mobiles with the same balance structure as Calder’s mobiles (based on the whippletree mechanism), and create moving abstract “paintings” that are truly three-dimensional, not just two-dimensional planes made of a series of flat shapes that curve with the air currents.

In his later years, Calder designed and made some of his mobiles consisting of two (or more) horizontal and vertical planes, each one being essentially arranged in two dimensions. His hanging mobile titled Lone Red Among Blacks (1961) is a good example to illustrate this. Here again, the three-dimensionality was a result of combining two or more “flat” two-dimensional arrangements, not of a fully three-dimensional arrangement.

These mobiles shown here are still designed with the interconnected balance structure where the balance of each part depends on the other parts, as in a Calder mobile. And same as in Calder’s mobiles, it’s essentially an upside down whippletree mechanism, which probably dates back to between 190 to 209 AD, and has been used to distribute force evenly through linkages when horses or mules pull a plow or a wagon:

Man Ray was the first artist (to my knowledge) to utilize this balance structure in a suspended sculpture with his piece titled Obstruction in 1920 (if you’d like to read more about the history of mobiles, please see my page Mobiles before Calder – Who Invented Mobiles – A History of Mobiles Part 1).

Almost all artists who have made mobiles since Calder have adapted his two-dimensional approach. Few have worked to move beyond and explore the possibilities of fully three-dimensionally designed mobiles that utilize the interconnected balance structure that distinguishes them from simply suspended sculptures (please see my page Mobile Sculpture Artists – A History of Mobiles – Part 2 for some examples). George Rickey recognized the limitations of Calder’s two-dimensional approach to mobiles and expanded the art form, although many of his pieces don’t utilize an interconnected balance structure throughout. After around 1950, he often also opted for standing sculptures instead of suspended ones. Lynn Chadwick, Tim Prentice, Jerome Kirk, Derick Pobell, Laurent Martin “Lo”, Philippe Jestin and Jade Oakley have found ways to some extend to free the art form of mobiles from Calder’s two-dimensional approach. Tim Prentice expressed the challenge in a conversation with Nicholas Fox Weber (published by Maxwell Davidson Gallery in 2000): “Calder was credited with inventing sculpture with moving parts, so for me Rickey was incredibly important because he demonstrated that this concept wasn’t any one man’s property. I can do it to a limited degree. I can draw a line and have it curve, undulate, curl, turn, twist – in that sense, the line is changing – and I can do it with planes. The next challenge would be to do it with volume.” Volume as in three-dimensional planes instead of two-dimensional planes? Or no planes at all?

On the topic of Calder and Rickey, Tim Prentice wrote in his book Drawing on the Air – The Kinetic Sculptures of Tim Prentice: “If you compare the two, Calder was a great storyteller [and an entertainer] and not a theorist. When anyone asked him tough questions about his work, he hid behind his humor. For example, when asked how he knew a piece was finished, he famously answered, “When it’s dinner time.” He operated entirely on intuition. By contrast, Rickey was an intellectual and teacher. He was far more strict in his use of Constructivist principles. He analytically isolated movement in the way Josef Albers isolated color. [Rickey] and Calder represent the two contrasting sides of the brain.” Tim Prentice’s work greatly expands the art form of mobiles. He seems to build on Rickey’s approach more than on Calder’s. As he himself has explained: “As I concentrated on reducing weight and friction, the decisions came to be based more on engineering and less on aesthetics” and “we make the machine and keep our artistic instincts out of it and the air comes along and does the art.” Can the contrasting approaches be combined in new ways?

Building on Calder’s hanging mobile 13 Spines (1940):

Photos reverse the idea of turning an abstract painting or drawing into a three-dimensional moving sculpture. They turn it back into a flat immobile image made of abstract shapes. Two-dimensional layouts in mobiles, like many of Calder’s mobiles and the more conventional mobile sculptures I made some years ago, are easier to capture and comprehend in photos. While video can provide a solution to this, most people discover new art in the form of photos nowadays, especially now in the digital age. You can make an amazing three-dimensional sculpture, but if the sculpture doesn’t allow you to represent its idea comprehensively in images and photos, then you’re limiting the reach of the idea greatly. As Sarah Sze put it in an interview with Melissa Chiu: “In many ways, great artworks are known primarily through photos – so arguably the photos are as important as the artworks themselves.”

An approach that seems architectural to me:

The balance structure of a mobile (the whippletree mechanism) is like a few simple chords on an instrument: simple, but the possibilities of what can be done with it are infinite.

“Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches.” – Pablo Picasso, in an interview with Alexander Liberman for Vogue in 1956.

Or as architect Santiago Calatrava has pointed out: the surrealist André Breton said, “Everyone knows what a head looks like”, to which Alberto Giacometti retorted: “Not me.”

See the continuation of this post Contemporary Mobile Sculptures – Expanding Calder’s Art Form – Part 2 with additional new mobile sculptures that I’m working on based on this approach.

As with anything on my website, if you have any suggestions, anything that should be added, corrected, or have any questions or comments, please let me know.

– See more of my mobiles –

Made out of aluminum and stainless steel and with a diameter of 60 inches / 150 cm, it weighs less than a pound / less than half a kilogram, and therefor moves with the slightest air currents.

Unlike a conventional mobile by Alexander Calder, this is essentially one mobile made of three mobiles. I believe this is quite unique and original, I’ve not seen a mobile like it.

A “fly around” animation of the design:

Painted:

Custom made wooden box for shipping:

– See more of my custom made kinetic sculptures and suspended mobiles –

The design:

The residence:

The finished sculpture:

Indoor storage solution for stormy days:

Ready for shipping:

Installed on site:

A painting by David Hockney complementing in dynamics and colors hangs on the wall in the background:

– See more of my custom made moving sculptures –

Same as the above linked-to sculptures, this mobile is a kinetic sculpture based on the same type of balance structure as a conventional Calder mobile, yet original and contemporary in design (architectural in design?).

See more contemporary mobile sculptures:
– New Contemporary Original Mobile Sculptures in Progress – Part 1
– New Contemporary Original Mobile Sculptures in Progress – Part 2

See more of my mobiles

And some other new mobile sculptures I’m working on:

See more of my mobiles
Read more of my blog about mobiles
See the most popular blog posts

The idea / design:

Measurements:

The finished mobile:

The installed mobile on site (L’Usine’s Facebook post):

See more of my mobiles
Read more of my blog about mobiles
See the most popular blog posts

For an element (shape) to be able to balance, the suspension point needs to be above the center of mass. In addition to this requirement, when the center of mass is lower (farther away from the suspension point), the balance will be more stable. Vice versa, when the center of mass is higher (closer to the suspension point), the balance will be more fragile (the element is more likely to overturn):

Obviously within a mobile, an element might have the weight of several elements that are in the lower part of the mobile attached to it, which lowers the center of of mass. A good example of this can be seen in a large site-specific mobile I was working on for a three story light shaft in Chicago last year:

In some cases, it might be necessary to raise the suspension point with the help of an extension:

• See more of my mobiles
• Read more of my blog about mobiles
• See the most popular blog posts

The show features artists of all media in an exhibition demonstrating mathematic evidence in art, whether the works are directly inspired by math (geometry, fractals, patterns, etc.) or if the mathematical principles emerge naturally and reveal themselves from our human predisposition towards order.

The exhibition is taking place at the Esther Klein Gallery at Philadelphia’s University City Science Center, 3600 Market Street, October 7–November 20, and is part of the annual city-wide DesignPhiladelphia festival (October 8–16). An opening reception is scheduled for today, October 14, 5–7:30pm. Gallery hours are Mondays–Saturdays, 9am–5pm.

Among 2-dimensional paintings and drawings that display intricate fractals and kaleidoscopic geometries, a variety of 3-dimensional, video and interactive works will be on display. Showcasing mathematics as much as the medium, some of the works on view include a long algae-like crocheted piece of hyperbolic curves, interactive design where the viewer can customize fractal performance with the touch of a finger, and unique geometric paper sculptures using the system of scientific kirigami.

Participating artists include: Justin Bean, Regina Ceribelli, William Cromar, Jessica Curtaz, Chris Eben, Robert Fathauer, Karen Freedman, S. Leser, Marco Mahler and Henry Segerman, Gabriele Meyer, Maximilian Morresi, Brittany Phillips, Bruce Pollock, Mike Tanis, Andrew Cameron Zahn.

This is the second exhibition curated by Gaby Heit at the Science Center’s Esther Klein Gallery investigating natural design. The first one was Cellular/Molecular for the 2013 Philadelphia Science Festival.

Press:

• Philly Voice
• WHYY Newsworks
• Geekadelphia
• Philly Egotist
• UPenn Almanac

– Facebook Event Page –

I competed against 22 sculptors for the commission including Zaha Hadid.

– See the design proposals that I submitted –

The sculpture measures 33ft (10m) in height and 26ft (8m) in diameter.

The largest shape is 5 2/3 ft long (1 3/4 m), the longest arm measures 17 3/4 ft (5 1/2 m) in length.

Made of aluminum, the mobiles weighs only about 100 pounds (45kg).

Two photos from the Grand Opening Celebration on August 28th 2015:

Render animation of the 3D model of the mobile:

The hospital is located on a hilltop in historic Mt. Auburn above downtown Cincinnati. The view from the hospital’s rooftop garden:

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) designed the new Joint and Spine Center, the same architecture, interior design, engineering, and urban planning firm that also collaborated with Alexander Calder on numerous projects from the 1950s through the 1970s. A view from outside of the suspended sculpture in the atrium:

The 125 year old Christ Hospital is consistently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s top hospitals. Here’s an outside view of the newly built Joint and Spine Center with the atrium in which the sculpture is installed at the main entrance:

These are photos that I took myself. Professional photos should follow within a month. Here’s one by Tom Rossiter for Health Care Design Magazine:

Thanks to Mike Rainer of Mike’s Machine & Welding for assisting with the fabrication of the mobile.

– See more of my large mobile art –

Q: Well my first question for you is why do you think my math teacher wanted us to create a mobile and research a mobile artist?

A: My best guess would be because mobiles are fun to make, beautiful to look at, and are a great way to illustrate how math can be applied to real things. They also allow for easy experimenting.

Q: Alexander Calder received a degree in mechanical engineering and told people that he was good at math. Do you have a math/science/computer background that helps when you develop your mobile art?

A: I got into applying math to computer animations when I was in middle school. My friend and I used the programming language Pascal. That was in the late 1980s so it was the early days of computer animation. I’m thinking if I stayed with it, I might be working at a film animation company now. In school, I also liked math and physics very much. With what I do now, those experiences probably gave me the ability to quickly determine if the balance structure of a mobile will work or not. Some of the 3d printed mobiles I designed a couple of years ago (in a collaboration with mathematician Henry Segerman) were created by writing scripts in the programming language Python. It was very easy for me to adapt to it because of my earlier experiences with Pascal. I’m also using engineering software more and more often, mostly a program called Rhinoceros, which I think will lead to being able to design rather complex mobiles eventually. And from time to time I’m working on animating 3d models of mobiles based on gravity, air currents and friction. When it comes to developing new designs, what I think matters the most is the ability to think about it in new ways and not just follow the same old patterns.

Q: You did lots of interesting things before you became a mobile artist. Do you think those other jobs helped make you a better artist?

A: I think they helped me to see myself as more than an artist. I see myself just as much as someone who runs a custom fabrication business, which involves all the standard parts of running a business (marketing, drawing up proposals, communicating with clients, inventory, shipping, etc). It’s not just about coming up with mobile designs that are fascinating to me. It’s also very important that the client will be very happy with the end result.

Q: Tell me about a favorite piece of work you created and why it’s one of your favorites.

A: I very much like working on large mobiles. Because of their size, they just have such an amazing visual impact. In general, there are several of my mobiles that I like very much because I think they’re rather original in design:

I also very much liked working on the aforementioned collection of 3d printed mobiles. There was the excitement of experimenting in uncharted territory. To my knowledge, no one else has made fully 3d printed mobiles yet. It also allows for mobile designs that would be difficult to make by hand. When my work schedule allows it, I want to explore it further and see what other new designs are made possible by combining mobiles with 3d printing.

Q: Where do you get your ideas for individual pieces of art?

A: Sometimes I look at the space where the mobile will be installed. I look at the shapes and dynamics of the architecture, or the interior decorating style. Ideas usually emerge from that. Some clients who order custom made mobiles have specific ideas for the design, so I just fill in the parts where the client might be feel unsure about a certain design or technical aspect.

Thanks for the great questions, Aidan!

More interviews:
Behind The Virtual Storefront
Meet The Makers
The Edge
FAMO (in Italian)

The doodle was a Calder-style mobile that used HTML5 canvas which made it possible for people to interact with it and make it move. It ran a physics simulation on the mobile’s geometry and then did real-time 3D rendering with vector graphics. You can still view the doodle and try it out (and you should, it’s a lot of fun!) via the Google Doodles Archive.

As someone who has written code for 3d animations and scripts for 3d printed mobiles, I have a lot of admiration for the technical end of this doodle. But as a professional mobile maker, it can’t help to notice that apparently there wasn’t enough research done on how the balance structure of a mobile works. The mobile shown in the Google doodle would never work in reality. It has two completely unsupported sections:

And reconstructing the mobile in my CAD software and calculating the balance points, it turns out that a number of them are incorrect. Here’s where they should be instead:

If someone were to make this mobile, the lowest four parts of it could be fixed by adjusting the balance points to their correct positions. However, that wouldn’t be enough for everything from there on up. The unsupported arms would need to be redesigned first. So in that way, the above indicated balance point corrections in the upper part of the mobile don’t really mean anything. Structural changes would have to be made first.

– Read of my blog about mobiles –

There’s an online version of the article, a PDF version, or subscribe to the magazine (they have lots of other great projects in each issue!).

A great looking mobile based on the article by Keith Wright who sent me this photo:

Here’s a photo of a mobile made by Carolyn Kingston based on the instructions as part of the Kinetic Mobile Making Group in the Boston, MA area:

• Blog post I wrote explaining some of the basics about the balance of a hanging mobile
• Blog post I wrote about What Wire to Use to Make a Hanging Mobile and Where to Buy It
• Blog post with mobile-making related questions that I’ve received via email and my answers
• An article I wrote for Houzz: From the Artist: How to Make a Real Mobile – It’s All in the Balancing Points (there’s a number of questions and answers in the comment section of the article as well). The article is now also available in German
• A history of early mobiles that I’ve put together
• Some technical (“behind-the-scenes”) aspects of designing, making and installing a large custom mobile
• A definition of mobiles
• Q&A about Mobiles for a middle school student’s math class project
• See some of my mobiles if you’re looking for design ideas: handmade mobiles, large custom-made mobiles, 3D printed mobiles and kinetic sculptures

If there’s anything else I can help with, don’t hesitate to contact me.

– See more of my hanging mobiles or read more of my blog about mobiles –

– See more of my custom mobiles or read more of my blog about mobiles –

From the Book:

Kinetic Structures, Virtually Balanced: The term “mobile” was first used in 1931 by Marcel Duchamp to describe the kinetic wire-frames made by Alexander Calder, whose iconic works later sparked an entire genre of sculpture. These works were created in situ, taking advantage of ambient air currents and finely calibrated equilibriums to generate large constructions, both dynamic and serene in their movements. In the years that followed, the art form became archetypal, but the advent of sophisticated design and engineering software has allowed for unprecedented methods of working in the medium. A collaboration arose between kinetic sculptor Marco Mahler and Henry Segerman, an assistant professor of mathematics, on the question of advanced modeling for the creation of rapid prototyped mobiles. Communicating exclusively via email, Skype and Twitter, the two were united by the shared interest in a mobile emerging fully assembled from a single print, the separate parts already interconnected. The precision of the printing technology allowed them to calibrate the balance to the micron (one one-thousandth of a millimeter), slightly modifying the thickness of certain elements to generate different bearing. They also experimented with scripted modeling in the Python programming language to increase the limits of intricacy, for instance with the 1365 pieces that make up the Quaternary Tree Mobile Level 6. Finally they uploaded their designs to Shapeways, transforming the mobile from a delicate one-off to a geometric code available for materialization on demand.

About the Book:

3D?printers will soon be found in more and more workshops, offices, and homes. With them, we will be able to print out small pieces of furniture, prototypes, replacement parts, and even a new toothbrush on-site at any time. Consequently, new production methods and business models are developing—along with a new visual language of multidimensional formal explorations. Today, 3D objects and complex forms can already be printed out that were previously impossible to achieve with traditional methods.

Printing Things is an inspirational and understandable exploration of the creative potential of 3D printing. The book not only introduces outstanding projects, key experts, and the newest technologies, but it also delves into the complex topics that these paradigm-shifting technologies bring up, such as how to handle copyrights and seamless manufacturing.

– Read the review on designboom –

“I discovered Marco’s shop when I typed “Richmond, VA” in the “Shop Local” feature on Etsy. Marco Mahler’s shop, ArtMobile, intrigued me because fine art mobiles like his are an unusual item to find on Etsy, and he takes great photographs of his work. His mobiles are fun and stylish, and pretty classy-looking if I do say so myself. His 3d-printed mobiles are apparently the first of their kind! Also, I don’t see that many guy sellers on Etsy, so his shop stood out to me for that reason, too. I hope you enjoy reading the interview with Marco. Turns out he’s pretty business-savvy. I learned a lot from reading his answers. Enjoy!”

– Read the interview –

Read more of my blog or see more of my mobiles.

Upon the client’s request, I disassembled this mobile after taking these photos and packed it so tightly that he could bring it to Buenos Aires on an airplane. See the photos of the reassembly and installation of the mobile on location.

Not a Calder reproduction, but definitely strongly Calder inspired.

And just for fun, here’s a GIF animation with a snow flurry (pun intended for the Calder aficionados reading this):

– Read more of my blog or see more of my large custom made mobiles –

These are not the most impressive examples, but using 3-D modeling software allows for precise planning to ensure a custom sized mobile will fit the space nicely.

It is also a great tool during the design stage of a custom mobile to show how it will look exactly in a specific space:

Designed with python scripts and rendered in Rhino.

Mixing contemporary art with movement, Calder style mobiles with 21st century design elements.

For me as someone who makes mobiles for a living, I find this next one rather interesting. The wire structure looks like it was made with a lot of care, yet the sheet metal pieces attached to it look like left over pieces that he just picked up from the floor (at least two of them look like they’ve been stepped on). Calder sure didn’t try to make them look “nice”:

The post 2 Photos of Hanging Mobiles from the current Calder show at Venus Over Manhattan first appeared on Mobile Sculpture Artist - Calder inspired Kinetic Art.]]> https://www.marcomahler.com/3d-printed-holiday-ornaments-christmas-gifts/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=3d-printed-holiday-ornaments-christmas-gifts Sun, 17 Nov 2013 01:18:13 +0000 https://www.marcomahler.com/?p=3410 I just dropped of 30 red and white 3D printed holiday ornament mobiles at Modern Artifacts here in Richmond today. For the out-of-towners, you can order them through our shop at Shapeways. Starting at only $9 a piece, they’re also a very affordable mid-century modern meets contemporary 3d printing art gift. And they’re small enough […]

I just dropped of 30 red and white 3D printed holiday ornament mobiles at Modern Artifacts here in Richmond today. For the out-of-towners, you can order them through our shop at Shapeways. Starting at only $9 a piece, they’re also a very affordable mid-century modern meets contemporary 3d printing art gift. And they’re small enough to serve as stocking stuffers.

Now available in 9 different colors (yellow, green and orange are newly added). To have them delivered by Christmas, please order them latest by December 10th if you’re in the U.S. or Europe, for anywhere else it’s December 6th.

This mobile is also featured in “Printing Things – Visions and Essentials for 3D Printing“.

Also see our 3D Printed Quaternary Tree Mobile (Level 4) in the Shapeways Gift Guide in “Conversation Starters” and in “Home Decor”.

The post 3D Printed Holiday Ornament Mobiles first appeared on Mobile Sculpture Artist - Calder inspired Kinetic Art.]]>

Last month, Etsy announced new policies that would allow sellers to apply to peddle items they produced with manufacturing partners, as well as to hire staff and use outside companies to ship their goods — all provided that the sellers demonstrated the “authorship, responsibility and transparency” intrinsic to handmade items. By easing the definition of “handmade,” Etsy is trying to accommodate individual vendors who are having more and more trouble keeping up with their growing volume of customers. But many Etsy users are outraged by what they see as Etsy’s abandonment of its commitment to human handicraft, with some jumping ship for purer artisan sites like Zibbet.

When is something truly “handmade”? If you make something by hand out of supplies bought at your local craft or hardware store that were made using machines, well then it isn’t 100% handmade. Along those lines, the New York Times article makes the point that almost nothing has been truly handmade for thousands of years. But the real issue that Etsy and both its sellers and buyers are facing I thought was very well summoned up in the comments section:

“The “my handmade is more handmade than your handmade” debate has waged since Etsy first opened. But THIS isn’t not about degrees of handmade. This isn’t about “Hey, Sarah’s shop is handmade because she hand sews every stitch of her handbags while Betty’s shop isn’t because she uses a sewing machine”. This is about Sarah (who stitches everything by hand and charges a price that justifies that time) & Betty (who charges a bit less because her labor is a bit less) both being put out of business because Lulu who is actually a factory with 900 employees is mass producing handbags & selling them as “handmade” on Etsy next to Sarah and Betty’s, charging 1/2 the price. Also: Lulu’s able to produce 2000 new listings a month while Sarah & Betty can only do a few dozen, making their work unfindable. It’s about Cora, who isn’t making ANYTHING. She’s buying bags wholesale dirt cheap on AliExpress & merely reselling the already finished goods that she had NO part of making on Etsy as “handmade” at a fraction of the price Sarah & Betty can. Even before Etsy’s change in policy, you’d find several Lulus & Coras for every Sara or Betty. For Etsy to be transparent, they’d have to be able to tell Sarah’s handmade bags from Cora’s not-even-remotely handmade handbags, a task which they seem unable or unwilling to handle. It’s a masquerade ball & instead of actually investigating who is under the masks, they send out more invitations.” – by “Artist” from “Angryville”. As someone who makes handmade mobiles through a shop on Etsy, this is obviously a topic that concerns me too.

The second issue, and probably the the more contemporary one that wasn’t addressed at all in the article, is Etsy’s policy regarding “handmade” and 3d printing. I sell our collection of 3d printed mobiles through my shop on Etsy. They do allow it (“3D printed items can be sold in the handmade category without listing the manufacturer.” – from their Seller Guidelines). I designed them with the help of Henry Segerman, a mathematician, and we have a 3d printing service company called Shapeways print them for us. We do have a very significant part in creating these mobiles, they are 100% the product of our imagination and creativity. But they are anything but “handmade”.

3D printing aside, if you’re looking to buy something handmade, please make sure it really is handmade and listed by an honest seller. Don’t fall for the cheap pretend handmade stuff. There are a lot of honest hardworking people listing their beautiful and carefully handmade items on Etsy who will very much appreciate your business.

Influenced by Alexander Calder‘s style, yet it has a clear and solid identity of its own.

See more of my custom-designed and custom-made mobiles …

Topics on this page:

• Swivels & Hanging Hardware
• Balance & Alignment
• Wire Choice, Gauge & Handling
• Rods & Large-Scale Mobiles
• Sheet Metal, Shapes & Finishing
• Materials & Calder
• Working, Prefab, Shipping & Business
• More Q&A, Examples & Resources

Swivels & Hanging Hardware

Balance & Alignment

Wire Choice, Gauge & Handling

Rods & Large-Scale Mobiles

Sheet Metal, Shapes & Finishing

Materials & Calder

Working, Prefab, Shipping & Business

More Q&A, Examples & Resources

I’ll add more of these questions and answers from my email archive when I get a chance.

Joe Murphy sent me a link to a video of the first mobile that he made with dragonflies made of glass after reading some of my how-to posts:

Additional resources on making mobiles:

• Blog post I wrote explaining some of the basics about the balance of a hanging mobile
• Blog post I wrote about What Wire to Use to Make a Hanging Mobile and Where to Buy It
• An article I wrote for MAKE magazine on How to Make a Mobile Based on Calder’s Mobiles
• An article I wrote for Houzz: From the Artist: How to Make a Real Mobile – It’s All in the Balancing Points (there’s a number of questions and answers in the comment section of the article as well). The article is now also available in German
• A history of early mobiles that I’ve put together
• Some technical (“behind-the-scenes”) aspects of designing, making and installing a large custom mobile
• A definition of mobiles
• Q&A about Mobiles for a middle school student’s math class project
• See some of my mobiles if you’re looking for design ideas: handmade mobiles, large custom-made mobiles, 3D printed mobiles and kinetic sculptures

See more of my custom-made mobiles …

– Part 1 –

See more of my custom mobiles …

See more of my custom designed mobiles …

– Part 2 –

See more of my custom mobiles …

Links to various videos of the installation keep floating around social media sites calling it “the largest kinetic sculpture in the world”, spanning an area of 75 square meters (810 sq ft) and a height of 7.3 meters (24 ft). While the sculpture is an amazing accomplishment, it doesn’t seem to be the world’s largest kinetic sculpture. To my knowledge, the largest kinetic sculpture in the world (and also the largest mobile sculpture) is Alexander Calder‘s White Cascade, which hangs in the Eastburn Court of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia:

It measures approximately 100 feet (31 meters) from top to bottom, is 60 feet (18 meters) at its widest point, and weighs close to 10 tons, including the motor, surpassing Calder’s 920 pound 76-foot-long mobile (or 85 feet, depending on source) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I’m not sure if any of his stabiles are larger, but if not, then this would also be Alexander Calder’s largest sculpture. Speaking of that large Calder mobile at the National Gallery, it is made with hollow honeycomb-type structures designed by Paul Matisse (grandson of Henri Matisse and son of Pierre Matisse) and covered with paper-thin aluminum, and aluminum and steel bars, with the stress points being strengthened with molybdenum. It weighs 930 pounds (422 kg). The previous estimates from Calder’s foundry in Biémont exceeded 5000 pounds (2268 kg). It doesn’t have a name. When Calder was asked for a title, he replied “You don’t name a baby until it is born.” But then he passed away one year before it was installed at the Gallery. The mobile sculpture has been refurbished recently.

Back to White Cascade: It took just two days to install it. The installation was carried out in two stages. In the most difficult and time-consuming part of the job, the four top-most and largest aluminum discs — still in their protective wrappings — were joined to their respective stainless steel rods, then raised one by one and linked together. The 10 lower discs and rods were linked together on the ground level, then raised into position as a unit. A crane situated on the sidewalk outside the entrance to the Bank provided the lifting power.

Finally, the wrappings were removed. The 14 white aluminum discs that comprise “White Cascade” range in size from 3.5 feet in diameter to 12.7 feet. The longest of the connecting stainless steel rods is 36 feet; the shortest, 9 feet. Powered by an electric motor, the mobile rotates clockwise on a radius of 32.5 feet.

Here’s a photo by H. Scott Heist of Calder in front of the mobile:

The mobile was installed in May 1976, Calder passed away less than six months later.

Do you know of a larger kinetic sculpture? Let me know if you do and I’ll add it to this post.

Current relevance as of September 2025: No newer kinetic sculptures surpassing White Cascade in size have been widely reported in searches up to this date.

Also see my list of the 5 Largest Mobiles worldwide that I’m aware of.

– Update: –

I received an email from Anthony Howe nominating his OCTO 3 sculpture as possibly the largest outdoor permanent kinetic wind sculpture. It measures 25′ h x 30′ w x 30′ d (7.6m x 9.1m x 9.1m) and weighs 7000 pounds (3200 kg):

Since receiving the email from Anthony, it seems that he has surpassed these dimensions with the cauldron he created for the 2016 Rio Olympics measuring 40 ft (12.2 meters):

Related: Watch as Anthony Howe creates a massive, kinetic wind sculpture

– See some of my kinetic sculptures and mobiles –

Alexander Calder, Maripose, 1960, 30 x 67in.

Bonhams will offer Alexander Calder‘s (1898-1976) 1960 sculpture Maripose in the November 12 2013 Contemporary Art auction (est. $1,200,000-1,600,000). This stunning example of Calder’s large scale mobiles has been in private American hands for nearly 40 years in Wisconsin-based collections.

A native of Pennsylvania, Calder was born into a family of sculptors. His first solo show was held in Paris in 1927 while he was still in his twenties; he would soon become one of America’s most lauded and prolific artists. It was Marcel Duchamp who first dubbed Calder’s kinetic wire sculptures “mobiles,” – these hanging, interactive pieces would come to define the artist’s legacy.

Maripose was originally offered at Perls Gallery in New York, which represented Calder from 1954 until the artist’s death. The mobile was acquired in 1976 by a prominent private collector from Milwaukee’s Irving Galleries, and passed by descent to the present owner in 1988. The mobile was exhibited at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1987, and is registered with the Calder Foundation.

“In Maripose, every element of Calder’s genius is evident through the striking sense of balance and momentum the sculpture evokes,” said Jeremy Goldsmith, Bonhams Director of Contemporary Art in New York. “It’s a pleasure to bring such an important work to the market after nearly four decades in private hands.”

The auction will preview at Bonhams November 9-12 2013.

MOBILE 91

[September 27th 2012]

Width: 47 in (119 cm)
Height: 37 in (94 cm)
Materials: sheet metal (aluminum), wire, swivels
Colors: unpainted

All of the parts on the mobile can rotate full circle independently from all the other parts
Suitable for indoors or outdoors (I tested it outdoors on a very windy day and it held up just fine)

– See a custom version I made of this mobile –

[Click on image for full size]

via Freudenberger Design Studio (formerly Haus Interior)

See more of my large custom mobiles

It consists of two elements, both with a sort of cut off triangle with one corner on each bent at a 45 degree angle, which on one hand gives it more visual presence and more air resistance (which makes it move with slighter breezes), and on the other hand gives it a mid-century modern feel, not unlike many of the shapes found in Eero Saarinen‘s buildings and structures, one of my favorite architects. However I came up with the idea for the shapes while designing a custom mobile for a private residence at the Butterfield House, considered one of the most architecturally significant modern apartment houses in New York City.

Besides rotating, each element also moves up and down with the wind, and several people who have seen it so far thought it resembles a bird flapping its wings. It’s currently in just plain unpainted metal, you can pick custom colors or a metal finish. And obviously, just because it’s made for outdoors doesn’t mean you can’t hang it indoors.

Available through my mobiles shop on Etsy.

[Click on images to enlarge]

Looking for a different kind of mobile?

Indoor or outdoor, small or large, please see the ones available in my shop or contact me for a custom mobile.