The grand opening festivities begin on Saturday, September 20, with a free public parade, “Chaos and Kisses,” running from noon to 2 PM, led by artist Arto Lindsay. Organized by Marsha Perelman Senior Director of Programs Juana Berrío, the event highlights Philadelphia’s vibrant community spirit and reflects Calder Gardens’ unique approach, eschewing the traditional “museum” label for an immersive, narrative-free experience. The Calder Foundation, in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, will curate a rotating collection to keep the exhibits dynamic.

The $90 million project, backed by the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, builds on the city’s artistic heritage, linking to landmarks like the William Penn statue by Calder’s grandfather and the Swann Memorial Fountain by his father. Featuring open-air galleries and 37,000 seasonal perennial plants, the site encourages visitors to connect personally with Calder’s art.

Via Christie’s: A conversation with Piet Oudolf on Philadelphia’s new Calder Gardens

Calder Gardens will be open Wednesday through Monday, 11 AM to 5 PM, starting September 21, offering free grounds access and timed indoor gallery tickets, inviting the public to explore a blend of art and nature.

Photos by Iwan Baan.

If you’re in Philadelphia to visit Calder Gardens, there’s also Calder’s Ghost mobile at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s a large-scale, white abstract mobile hanging from the ceiling in the museum’s grand entrance hall. Originally created for the Guggenheim Museum, it spans 30 feet. Another one to see in Philadelphia is White Cascade at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the world’s largest mobile, descending 100 feet and spanning about 60 feet wide, suspended in an 8-story atrium. Free public tours are available weekdays, reservations recommended via the bank’s website. I’d suggest verifying these details before going, they may change from time to time.

Related to the official opening of Calder Gardens:

I recently made a custom mobile sculpture for the TV show And Just Like That … and installed on the set in a loft in New York City last week. Filming took place a couple of days after, and the art department informed me afterwards that the mobile “looked incredible on our set” and that it “was much admired”. The mobile should be visible in Season 2 Episode 5, which will be released on Thursday, July 13, 2023.

This is a photo of the yet-to-be-painted mobile in my work shop:

Made of aluminum, the mobile weighs only about 5 pounds (2.25 kg), so it moves even with the slightest air currents. The dimensions are approximately 10 feet (300 cm) in height and 10 feet in diameter.

A photo by Tanya Stadelmann from installation day:

__________

Update – July 13th 2023:

Here are screen captures from the episode where the mobile is featured when Sarah Jessica Parker‘s character (Carrie Bradshaw) visits Peter Hermann‘s character’s (George) place.

Mentions of the mobile, although (possibly) mistaken for a piece by Alexander Calder:

New York Times: ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2, Episode 5 Recap
Decider: Peter Hermann is the Perfect ‘And Just Like That’ Love Interest — Until He Isn’t

_________

Upon request, the design is based on a mobile that I custom-made for a private residence in Long Island, New York about 10 years ago:

Update:

There will be two more mobiles sculptures that I’ve made in Season 3 of the series, of which the first episode was released on May 29th 2025.

– See more of my mobile sculptures –

A photo of the yet-to-be-painted mobile suspended in my work shop:

Photos of the mobile sculpture installed at the yet-to-be-finished residence (photos of the finished project will follow soon):

In the evening with shadows of the mobile sculpture on the walls and the ceiling:

The sculpture is made of stainless steel and measures 136 inches (345 cm) in diameter and 107 inches (272 cm) in height.

– See more of my mobile sculptures –

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 –

Marco Mahler gives new life to the kinetic art form Calder made famous

It talks about how I got inspired by Alexander Calder’s mobiles at the National Gallery of Art’s Tower 2 in Washington, D.C. to make my first mobiles, then made small mobiles and kinetic sculptures that I sold on online, got commissioned for a series of mobiles for a New York Fashion Week, winning third prize in the 2015 International Kinetic Art Organization competition, a custom mobile for Robert A. M. Stern, New York architect and dean of architecture at Yale, collaborated with mathematician Henry Segerman to create 3D printed mobiles, a custom designed mobile sculpture that I made for the 2019 movie The Upside starring Bryan Cranston and Nicole Kidman, and some of my new ideas for suspended kinetic sculptures for future projects.

Mobiles shown in the article are Mobile 92 and one of my original contemporary mobile sculptures. Some of the 3d printed mobiles and a shape for a large custom mobile are visible in the background, as well as some of my other contemporary mobiles.

Thanks to Elizabeth Cogar and R•Home managing editor Susan Morgan!

Incidentally, a mobile that I custom-made for architect and former Dean of the Yale School of Architecture Robert A.M. Stern for his room at The Kips Bay Designer Show House is featured in the following issue of R•Home Magazine in the feature article about interior designer Doug Stiles and his condo in Richmond’s Bellevue Square where the mobile is currently suspended:

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 –

In the film, the mobile is suspended in Bryan Cranston’s character’s bedroom:

Nicole Kidman with the mobile in the film:

Kevin Hart with the mobile in the film:

The design of the mobile in the design of the cover of the Bryan Cranston’s character’s book:

The movie set for the bedroom scenes with the mobile:

The mobile suspended in my shop before shipping it to the movie set in Philadelphia:

My custom-made Mobile 92 that served as inspiration for the design:

The art credits at the end of the movie:

A 3D “fly-around” animation of the computer model of the mobile:

From our local neighborhood newsletter:

Fan Artist Commissioned for Major Hollywood Film

By Katherine Jordan, Marco Mahler

In late 2016, Fan resident and kinetic sculptor Marco Mahler received a phone call from Alyssa Winter, who introduced herself as the assistant set decorator for a film under the working title Untouchable. She was interested in the possibility of having a large mobile sculpture custom created for the movie. Apparently much of the film was still in the early stages and yet to be decided, including members of the cast, but the fact that she had previously worked as set director for the television series Mr. Robot gave him an indication that this might be a major film.

They discussed the work of artists, such as Alexander Calder and Bruno Munari, the present copyright holders of their work, and possible implications of making and showing a mobile sculpture similar to theirs in a movie. Mahler sent some initial design ideas that she presented to the director of the movie, who turned out to be Neil Burger (who also directed Divergent, Limitless, and The Illusionist). They decided to commission Mahler for the mobile for the film and sent him a sketch of what they had in mind, modeled after an original work that he featured on his website. “The sketch they sent looked great, but the structure of it would never have worked as a mobile,” Marco Mahler remarked, “In a true mobile, the balance of the upper parts depends on the weight of the lower parts. If the sketch they sent would have been made as a mobile, the structure of it would have just collapsed.” Over the next month, they reworked the design, with him sending images and animations of new design variations to the set director Beth Rubino (IMDb) then sending back comments on the new designs from Neil Burger. By the end of January 2017, the design was finalized, and by mid-February, the mobile had been made and shipped to the movie set in Philadelphia, where the set crew installed it with the help of instructions that he sent along.

In the meantime, more details about the film emerged. The title of the film had been changed to The Upside, and Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart, and Nicole Kidman were cast for the main characters. The film is a remake of the 2011 French film The Intouchables, which grossed over $400 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing movie in a language other than English. Based on a real-life story and very similar to the original movie, The Upside follows a paralyzed billionaire (Bryan Cranston) who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a recently paroled convict (Kevin Hart). Marco Mahler added, “As I understood in the early stages of the movie when designing the mobile, I believe that Bryan Cranston’s character receives the mobile as a gift from his wife. After she passes away, the mobile becomes a symbol and reminder of their past love and marriage. Last I heard regarding the whereabouts of the mobile, Beth said they might display it at the premiere of the movie.”

The Upside is scheduled for release on January 11, 2019. In the meantime, you can see the mobile in the trailer for the movie and check-out more of Mahler’s work at www.marcomahler.com.

Custom dimensions for the mobile:

Additional ideas from the design process:

Mobile modeled after The Upside mobile made from a Dr. Pepper can by Jason L Nuttle:

Additional links:

“A penthouse apartment, a setting which is exploited to the fullest in this film, giant rooms with floor-to ceiling windows, vestibules, hallways, high ceilings, terraces, double-sink bathrooms, along with the Bryan Cranston character’s multimillion-dollar Contemporary Art collection, a million bucks worth of art hanging on every wall in every room of the place” – “The Upside” Is the Money

Movies and TV Shows Where Interior Design Is A Scene Stealer (featuring The Upside)
Movies and TV to Watch for the Interior Design (featuring The Upside)

Oct 23rd 2018 – The Upside premieres at Philadelphia Film Festival
Nov 2018 – Fan Artist Commissioned for Major Hollywood Film
Jan 13th 2019 – The Upside Tops Aquaman With Surprising $19.6M Weekend
Feb 27th 2019 – The Upside With Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston Tops $100 Million Box Office

Artists whose artwork is also shown in the movie:

Rick Bartow
Helen Frankenthaler
Alex Katz
Lee Krasner
Saul Leiter
Robert Motherwell
Paul Bonet
Ed Ruscha
Kiki Smith
Cy Twombly
Robert Mapplethorpe
Edward Burtynsky
Joel Meyerowitz
Marilyn Minter

– See more of my custom designed mobile sculptures –

The mobile looks like this (so you’ll recognize it):

The mobile sculpture in the trailer:

The movie, directed by Neil Burger and starring Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart and Nicole Kidman, will be released on January 11th 2019.

From Hmm Daily: “A bomb-ass penthouse apartment … a setting which is exploited to the fullest in this film, giant rooms with floor-to ceiling windows, vestibules, hallways, high ceilings, terraces, double-sink bathrooms, along with the Bryan Cranston character’s multi-million-dollar contemporary art collection, a million bucks worth of art hanging on every wall in every goddamn room of the place, and a row of shiny high-end collectible automobiles.” See a list of prominent artworks from the credits from the film (including my mobile) at “The Upside” Is the Money

Related:
Oct 23rd 2018 – The Upside premieres at Philadelphia Film Festival
Nov 2018 – Fan Artist Commissioned for Major Hollywood Film
Jan 13th 2019 – The Upside Tops Aquaman With Surprising $19.6M Weekend
Feb 27th 2019 – The Upside With Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston Tops $100 Million Box Office

Movies and TV to Watch for the Interior Design (featuring The Upside)
The Upside on Facebook

– Additional photos and info about the mobile sculpture in the movie –

Each part in these mobiles is suspended and balanced. The balance structure in each mobile is essentially the same as in an classic Calder mobile, which is basically a whippletree mechanism turned upside down. They are suspended kinetic sculptures, each part is able to move independently with the air currents. They’re all made of steel.

These mobiles may be more contemporary in design, as opposed to some of the larger commissioned mobiles that I’ve made that are inspired by Alexander Calder‘s work (originator of the mobile sculpture) or some of the more mid-century modern mobiles. They also seem to be coming full circle back to some of the very first mobiles I made.

I’ll see your spider and raise you a centipede?

I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing with these mobiles. Maybe use them as maquettes for larger custom sculptures, or maybe finish them and see about an art gallery show for a change. Either way, they seem to be rather new, contemporary and original (and sometimes gravity defying?) to me, which I’m very excited about.

See New Contemporary Original Mobile Sculptures in Progress – Part 1
See an additional contemporary mobile sculpture
See more of my mobiles

Roy Lichtenstein
Mobile I, 1989
Galerie Gmurzynska

FOS
Mobile, 2010
Nils Stærk

Alexander Calder
Untitled, 1967
Kukje Gallery / Tina Kim Gallery

Alexander Calder
Gypsophila on Black Skirt, 1950
Helly Nahmad Gallery

Helly Nahmad Gallery also showed and sold Rouge Triomphant, a large hanging mobile by Calder, at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2014.

Alexander Calder
Untitled, 1955
Helly Nahmad Gallery

The above mobile sculpture measures 9 ft (2.74m) in height and 11 ft (3.35m) in width. It was made by Calder in India and can rotate full circle. Helly Nahmad Gallery is offering it for US$6.8 million.

Alexander Calder
Three Tentacles, 1975
Galerie Thomas

Alexander Calder
Untitled, 1974
Galería Leandro Navarro

Martin Boyce
Untitled, 2017
The Modern Institute

Alexander Calder
Red Snail, 1959
Galerie Thomas

Tomás Saraceno
Cumulonimubus calvus/M+Mb, 2017
Esther Schipper

Tomás Saraceno
Foam 91p/Mn, 2017
Esther Schipper

Tomás Saraceno
NGC/IC/M, 2017
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Claire Falkenstein
Sun, 1960
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

The above sculpture reminds me of Swarm Chandelier by Zaha Hadid.

Bruce Nauman
Untitled (Two Wolves, Two Deer), 1989
Hauser & Wirth

Jorge Pardo
Untitled, 2015
neugerriemschneider

And some suspended sculptures for sale at Design Miami Dec 6th to–10th 2017:

Christopher Kurtz
Untitled #1, 2017
Patrick Parrish Gallery

Christopher Kurtz
Untitled, 2017
Patrick Parrish Gallery

Kasper Kjeldgaard
Talisman, 2017
Patrick Parrish Gallery

And a hanging mobile:
Kasper Kjeldgaard
Friction, 2017
Patrick Parrish Gallery

Related: The 15 Best Booths at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2017

– See more mobiles –
– Read more of my blog about mobiles –

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

Probably anyone who is familiar with mobiles as an art form knows of Calder’s work. After all, he is widely regarded as the originator of the genre, which he continues to dominate even to present-day. “Calder is a school of one”, the Daily News announced in 1972. Art critic and Los Angeles Times contributor David Pagel referred to mobiles in a Los Angeles Times article in 2012 as “a genre of sculpture [Calder] may not have invented but owns so completely that it’s almost impossible for another artist to make a mobile and not be compared, unfavorably, to Calder.” As someone who makes mobiles professionally, I believe that there are vast uncharted territories in the art form of mobiles. 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.

Not many sculptors have applied themselves yet to the relatively new art form of mobiles over the past 100 years. However, some mobile sculpture artists (besides Calder) have created new creative approaches and expanded the art form of mobiles since the early 1930s:

Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003)

Lynn Chadwick was an English sculptor and artist. A self-trained yet extremely skilled craftsmen in metal, he is regarded as one of the major figures in the arts of the second half of the 20th century. While working with architect Rodney Thomas, he made at least sixty mobiles between 1947 and 1952, of which some were suspended and others freestanding. While Calder usually hand-cut rounded and oval painted shapes, and spaced them out in evocative patterns on simple wire frameworks, Chadwick’s geometric, interlocking shapes appeared to be cut from a single sheet and, in the 1951 mobiles, anchored by an elaborate, rigid, constructed framework made of wire, balsa wood, copper and brass. Very few of these mobiles survive. Interestingly, Chadwick always insisted that he had no knowledge of the mobiles that Calder made for 20 years previous to his, but that his mobiles had evolved in his own style from his work on exhibition stands:

Later in his career, Chadwick would commented: “So I did this suspension idea, and it took a long long time till I realized that I was doing exactly the same thing as Calder, but this was just about the time when I gave it up, because I realized that Calder was, really, better at doing what he was doing, than I was at what I was doing.”

His son Daniel Chadwick makes mobiles as well.

A mobile appears to be hanging on the wall in the back in Lynn Chadwick’s studio:

George Rickey (1907-2002)

George Rickey was an American kinetic sculptor. Originally inspired by Calder’s mobiles and having served as an engineer in the Army Air Corps in World War II, he is well known for his innovative standing kinetic sculptures that respond to the slightest air currents, and whose simplicity and scale made him an important figure in contemporary art. Around 1954, he began to wonder whether Calder, brilliant and varied as his mobiles were, had said it all. “When I found he had not, I had to choose among the many doors I then found open.” Whereas in Calder’s mobiles the motion of one part is almost invariably dependent on the motion of another (usually neighboring) element, the elements in Rickey’s work are no longer hierarchical but of equal status and able to move independently and randomly in relation to each other. In George Rickey’s obituary in 2002, Ken Johnson wrote in The New York Times: “Mr. Rickey was one of two major 20th-century artists to make movement a central interest in sculpture. Alexander Calder, whose mobiles Mr. Rickey encountered in the 1930’s, was the other.” He added: “It is a curious fact of contemporary art history that Mr. Rickey left no significant artistic heirs … no sculptor has adopted his innovations with comparably persuasive ambition or elegance.” I would think Tim Prentice (see below) would strongly qualify as a significant artistic heir, as well as perhaps Susumu Shingu, and more recently Phil Price, Pedro S. de Movellán and Michael Christoph Ernst. As to Rickey and mobiles, he made them as a child already and kept returning to the art form (although after around 1950, he often opted for standing kinetic sculptures instead of suspended ones):

A standing mobile:

Tim Prentice (b. 1930)

Tim Prentice is an American architect and kinetic sculptor. Beginning in the 1970s, his work grows out of the tradition of Alexander Calder and George Rickey, both of whom he met, but it became something very original and fascinating of its own, or as he recently put it “I claimed some new territory because there was more turf to be explored”:

See a short film At Work with Tim Prentice- A studio visit with kinetic sculptor Tim Prentice.

Bruno Munari (1907-1998)

Bruno Munari was an Italian artist, designer, inventor, and author. He was interested in creating pieces of art that could interact with their environment, and made what he called “Useless Machines” (macchine inutili) of which many were essentially mobiles. Very similar to Calder’s thought process when he started to make mobiles, Munari thought that instead of painting geometric forms, why not free them from their static state and suspend them in the air:

The following suspended sculpture by Munari seems related to Ruth Asawa’s looped wire sculptures that she made only a short number of years later:

Jerome Kirk (1923-2019)

Jerome Kirk was an American sculptor. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT, he has made sculptures that measure over 45 feet in height and weigh over 6 tons, exploring a wide variety of kinetic sculptures including mobiles, both suspended and standing:

Marco Mahler (me)

I would certainly not be so arrogant to see my work as comparable to the artistic accomplishments of the other sculptors listed here, however, as opposed to just create mobiles “in the style of Calder”, expanding the art form of mobiles with new creative approaches and techniques has been the underlying motivation and passion for me in my work. I’d like to think that I’m in the process of succeeding with this, from my fully three-dimensionally designed mobiles that I’m currently working on, to the deconstructivist (?) contemporary mobiles, to the fully 3d-printed mobiles that I created in a collaboration with Henry Segerman, all of which are ideas in progress that I’m working on expanding:

Philippe Hiquily (1925-2013)

Philippe Hiquily was a French sculptor and designer. After attending Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, including workshops by Swiss kinetic sculptor Jean Tinguely, he went on to make a wide variety of sculptures and furniture. Influenced by indigenous and ancient art, while also exploring themes of eroticism and abstraction, he began to make mobiles in 1954, and made weathered iron mobiles after his move to Tahiti in 2006:

Additional mobile sculpture artists (besides Calder) to be added to this list who have created new creative approaches and expanded the art form of mobiles since the early 1930s would be: Laurent Martin “Lo”, Philippe Jestin, Derick Pobell, Yuko Nishikawa, Steve Haas (who combines multiple levers within one object), Jade Oakley, Brad Howe and Dylan Davis and Jean Lee.

The following suspended sculptures don’t qualify as mobiles in a strict sense, because they don’t utilize the interconnected balance structure (a whippletree mechanism as in a Calder mobile) that distinguishes a mobile from simply a suspended kinetic sculpture. However, I think the sculptures by these artists are closely related to mobiles and would be important to add to this list:

Kenneth Martin (1905-1984)

Kenneth Martin was an English painter and sculptor who (with his wife Mary Martin and Victor Pasmore) was a leading figure in the revival of Constructivism. After focusing on portraits and landscapes, his interest turned to Kasimir Malevich‘s art and geometric abstraction, which he also applied to mobiles and kinetic sculptures beginning in the early 1950s:

Among contemporary mobile artists, Miranda Watkins’ mobiles appear to be taking a similar approach as the above mobile, as well as some of the 3d printed mobiles I created in a collaboration with mathematician Henry Segerman.

Richard Lippold (1915-2002)

Richard Lippold was an American sculptor known for his geometric constructions, often relating to Cubism and Constructivism. His suspended sculptures may not qualify as mobiles, but I like them too much to not include them in this list. He spent decades stringing wires across rooms, working with architects like Walter Gropius, creating hanging sculptures that measured over 100 feet and consisted of miles of wire. The below pictured “Orpheus and Apollo”, which used to be installed at Lincoln Center, was possibly one of the largest works of public art in New York City.

In 2014, it is was dismantled for maintenance and conservation, and it will not be reinstalled at its original location. Instead, the sculpture will be suspended as the centerpiece of La Guardia Airport’s Central Hall, which is set to open in 2022.

Update – October 2023: The five-ton sculpture has been reinstalled from the ceiling of the new glass-enclosed Atrium Business and Conference Center at La Guardia (connected to Terminal B’s arrivals and departures hall) that opens next week to the public.

If you like Richard Lippold’s work, take a look at Pae White‘s work.

Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt (1912–1994), more commonly known as Gego

Gego was a modern Venezuelan artist and sculptor. I wouldn’t consider her suspended kinetic sculptures necessarily to be mobiles, at least not the ones that I’m familiar with. Yet I think the breakthroughs she contributed are, and will be, very significant to the art form:

Be sure to also take a look at the amazing work by Elias Crespin (her grandson).

Additional sculptors whose work is related to mobiles (even though their work doesn’t qualify as mobiles in a strict sense because they don’t utilize the interconnected balance structure based on the whippletree mechanism) would be: Tomás Saraceno, Elias Crespin, Reuben Heyday Margolin, Julio Le Parc, Pae White, Paul Vexler, Ralph Helmick, Hitoshi Kuriyama, Leon Jakimič (founder and owner of Lasvit), Fausto Melotti, Neil Dawson, Jean Tinguely, Antony Gormley, Matt McConnell, Jonathan and Evelyn Clowes, Mel Ristau, Ralfonso “Ralf” Gschwend, François Morellet, Jesús Rafael Soto, Ruth Asawa, Hirotoshi and Nami Sawadaand, Sarah Sze and Kendall Buster (my work space neighbor a few doors down).

Calder’s work, along with mobiles in general, has recently received renewed attention and interest, partly due to the Calder Foundation‘s excellent management of Calder’s body of work and arrangements of brilliant shows worldwide. His mobiles keep setting new records at auctions, selling in the tens of millions of dollars. In 2014, the Art Newspaper wrote about that year’s world-renowned art fair Art Basel in Miami Beach: “The number of mobiles by Calder and other artists on galleries’ stands is striking. Among the works by the hundreds of artists brought by 267 galleries from 31 countries, mobiles definitely constitute a trend.”

Aside from the art form of mobiles, Calder was also a pioneer in making wire sculptures starting in the 1920s, making portraits out of wire of public figures, entertainers, close friends and himself. He also made wire sculptures for his Cirque Calder and of animals, often sprinkled with a bit of humor. One story has it that Calder presented himself at an exhibition venue at Harvard with no work. According to Calder, the gallery director “protested that I arrived with nothing but a roll of wire on my shoulders and pliers in my pockets”. By the time the show opened a few days later, Calder had created all the works for the show on the spot, while interacting with gallery personnel, patrons, and friends. Artists such as Ruth Asawa, Kendra Haste, Sophie Ryder, Edoardo Tresoldi, Kue King and Tomohiro Inaba have expanded the art form of wire sculptures since.

I’ll be adding to this list from time to time. As a continuation, please see my page Contemporary Mobile Sculptures – Expanding Calder’s Art Form.

This article was originally published on my blog here on this website in 2017. 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.

Related:

Artsy article: 7 Artists Who Created Innovative Mobiles—beyond Alexander Calder

New York Times article by Nancy Hass: How Artists Are Challenging Alexander Calder’s 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

sheet metal, wire and paint
39 in height x 30 in width / 99 cm height x 76 cm width

From Curbed: “Robert A.M. Stern Architects are well known for their classic approach to architecture, but the firm also has a lesser-known interior design arm. Two framed Andy Warhol wall coverings in yellow and hot pink, not pictured, served as a jumping-off point for this living area, where contemporary art and cheerful colors play off of the room’s original wood paneling.”

The opposite wall with yellow Venetian plaster featuring large framed fragments of Andy Warhol’s 1966 Day-Glo chartreuse and hot pink cow-head wallpaper from Mr. Stern’s personal collection:

Lauren Kruegel, Robert A.M. and Stern, and Ross Alexander:

From The New York Times: “Lauren Kruegel and Ross Alexander, design directors at Robert A.M. Stern Architects Interiors, were inspired by the Villa Necchi, the 1930s-era Milanese house that is a star of the lush 2009 film “I Am Love,” along with Tilda Swinton, who plays a wealthy, frozen wife on the brink of being unthawed by an affair. Their custom-made bright green velvet sofa is as luxurious as Ms. Swinton’s wardrobe. The tomato-red plates hung below the mantel are by Gio Ponti.”

From The Well Appointed House: “The Robert Stern team has glamorized Charles Platt’s staid brown wood-paneled dining room with bold colors; one wall of yellow Venetian plaster features large framed fragments of Andy Warhol’s 1966 Day-Glo chartreuse and hot pink cow-head wallpaper from Mr. Stern’s personal collection.

Villa Necchi, a 1935 house in Milan designed by Piero Portaluppi, which they admired for its stripped-down classicism in Luca Guadagnino’s 2009 film I Am Love, inspired us to combine a selection of Italian furniture dating from the 1930s through the 1950s with Modern French pieces from the same period. A “Janus” chandelier, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects for Remains Lighting, provides soft light above an all-glass desk by noted Italian designer and architect Gio Ponti in the window bay; to either side, a pair of 1930s French torche?res attributed to Louis Su?e in front of antique mirror panels restores the room’s original symmetry. The team organized two seating groups—a pair of white Kerstin Ho?rlin- Holmquist lounge chairs and a blue upholstered wing chair by Melchiorre Bega—on a beige and brown custom net- patterned circular rug by Crosby Street Studio. The chartreuse of the wallpaper is picked up in Dedar silk taffeta on an 11-foot sofa; a small settee is upholstered in a contrasting deep gardenia-leaf green velvet, both specially designed for this installation. Andirons by Gilbert Poillerat accent the firebox and tomato-red plates by Gio Ponti for Richard Ginori line the mantel. A custom mobile by Marco Mahler hangs over a grand piano; behind, William Pettit’s abstract “Nor Night Me” (1969), also from Mr. Stern’s collection, completes the scene.”

From Haute Living: “Stern and his team organized two seating groups—a pair of white Kerstin Hörlin- Holmquist lounge chairs and a blue upholstered wing chair by Melchiorre Bega—on a beige and brown custom net- patterned circular rug by Crosby Street Studio. The chartreuse of the wallpaper is picked up in Dedar silk taffeta on an 11-foot sofa; a small settee is upholstered in a contrasting deep gardenia-leaf green velvet, both specially designed for this installation. Andirons by Gilbert Poillerat accent the firebox and tomato-red plates by Gio Ponti for Richard Ginori line the mantel. A custom mobile by Marco Mahler hangs over a grand piano; behind, William Pettit’s abstract “Nor Night Me” (1969), also from Mr. Stern’s collection, completes the scene.”

From Eye-Catching Color and Pattern in the 2017 Kips Bay Show House:

Related: RAMSA’s Randy Correll and Lauren Kruegel Siroky Create Incollect Fantasy Rooms

___

New York Times: Robert A.M. Stern, Architect Who Reinvented Prewar Splendor, Dies at 86
Architectural Record: Robert A.M. Stern, Former Yale Dean and Exponent of Traditional Architecture, Dies at 86
Washington Post: Robert A.M. Stern, renowned architect and educator, dies at 86
Wall Street Journal: Robert A.M. Stern: A Master of Stylish Building

___

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

The design was inspired by this mobile (is it a bird?) that I previously made (also one of my favorites):

Variations from the Design Process:

Three “wings” as shown in this 3D fly around animation:

Additional Variations from the Design Process:

– See photos of the mobile sculpture in the movie –

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

A custom mobile for a foyer at a private residence in Miami, Florida. A draft of the mobile photoshopped into the two level space:

A three story custom mobile for a light well at a private residence in Chicago:

An additional design for the same space:

A custom mobile for the Titus Elementary School in Warrington, PA:

A custom mobile for a staircase at a private residence in Hong Kong:

A proposal for a private residence in Miami Beach:

Some (not yet made) ideas / mobile designs:

A render of a Calder-style mobile:

And sometimes all kinds of things break loose:

I’m also working on an additional new large scale project that I’m very excited about and will be posting about soon.

– See more of my custom mobiles or read more 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.

This mobile became the original inspiration for the custom-made mobile I made for the movie The Upside released in 2019.

It seems to me that this mobile crosses over from a mid-century modern style to a more contemporary one, in one of my earlier ventures to break away from Alexander Calder‘s work and to expand the art form of mobiles that he created beyond his work, which eventually led to these contemporary mobile sculptures, this hypothesis and these much more complex and intricate mobile sculptures.

The mobile shown here moves beautifully with the air currents. Although originally not intended for outdoors, I suspended it in the yard for a while, and it proved strong enough to withstand an intense storm. The weight at the bottom provides for quite a bit of stability. It’s a kinetic mobile sculpture, but it would make for a sophisticated hanging wall sculpture as well. I still have a stack of drawings with mobiles similar to this one, based on the same idea or theme (bird like?). I may get around to turning those drawings into mobiles eventually.

It seems that Stephen H. Kawai may have felt inspired by this mobile with his Ghost Bird (2018).

– See more of my mobile sculptures –

Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction on October 11th 2012 in London will include Alexander Calder‘s “Hello Allentown“, a hanging mobile he made the same year he passed away, 1976.

Expected to go for US$ 2 to 3 Million. More affordable options are here and here.

Before moving on to the Lot Notes, does anyone know if this quote is really by Calder: “The perpetually changing relations within the mobile gives them a metaphysical identity that relies on temporal memory to assemble the sequence of partial definitions comprising the more complex identity of the whole.”

Lot Notes: ‘The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle, I represent them by discs and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement’ (A. Calder, quoted in K. Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York, 1962).

Suspended from a sequence of bright red wires, the progression of multi-coloured discs that glides through the air is a triumphal example of Alexander Calder’s iconic mobile sculptures. Having once formed part of the historic collection of Philip and Muriel Berman and in fact titled after their hometown, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Hello Allentown is a tribute to the lifelong journey of collecting during which they amassed an impressive collection of monumental and important sculpture, paintings, drawings and prints. True civic leaders well known for their philanthropy as well as their commitment to championing the work of both young aspiring artists and the masters of their time, Philip and Muriel Berman collection was a testament to their personal connection with the art and in many instances their personal friendships with the artists, a friendship evident through the very title of Hello Allentown. With the artist signature aplomb, the vibrant spheres occupy both the vertical and horizontal planes, commanding the space in which they hang. The black discs that mark the highest and lowest point of Calder constellation act to contain the energetic eruptions of fiery reds and iridescent yellow that are contained within the centre of the configuration. Hello Allentown incorporates two of Calder favourite monikers – his exuberant use of colour and his formal examination of the spherical form. Through these two devices Calder investigates the formal relationship between two of the most basics tenets of art – form and colour – and how they interact, particularly in three-dimensional form. From the large black disc at the apex of the composition the eye is drawn down through a series of graceful arching limbs, each of which supports a round disc which decreases in size as the sculpture draws to a triumphal conclusion, ‘The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle Calder once said, ‘I represent them by discs and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement’ (A. Calder, quoted in K. Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York, 1962).

In addition to its elegantly balanced form, Hello Allentown is also distinguished by its chromatic range and intensity. Colour was an important expressive device for the artist and one of the most important factors in his compositions. For Calder, colour was not a representational force but rather an emotional one, in much the same way as Henri Matisse and André Derain, the historical pioneers in non-traditional use of colour. As Calder himself once commented: ”I want things to be differentiated. Black and white are first – then red is next. I often wish that I had been a Fauve in 1905” (A. Calder, quoted in Calder, London 2004, p. 89). Hello Allentown clearly demonstrates this philosophy with its harmonious use of black and white discs to compliment the chromatic brilliance of its red and yellow core.

Whilst Calder”s influential visit to Mondrian”s Parisian studio in 1930 is well documented as being the spark that ignited his interest in introducing colour and movement into sculpture, it is perhaps his friendship with Joan Miró that had the greatest influence on his career. The two men first met in 1928 and remained lifelong friends until Calder death in 1976. ”We became very good friends,” Calder once said, ”and attended may things together I came to love his painting, his colour, his personages” (A. Calder, quoted in E. Hutton and O. Wick (eds.), Calder, Miró, London 2004, p. 27). Their friendship was based on outsiders from the established art scene and reveled in their disdain of convention. From the early stages of their relationship, the pair explored the increasingly dominant field of abstraction – Calder prompted by his visit to Piet Mondrian”s atelier and Miró with his painterly forms that would eventually morph themselves into his iconic Constellations a few years later. The various coloured discs of Hello Allentown recall the lyrical, semi-abstracted forms of Miró paintings, a visual relationship that is emphasised by the fact that they held together by wires which resonate with the elegant sense of calligraphic line of the Spanish artist.

The present work is a rare example of a mobile that was produced during the latter part of Calder”s career. From the mid-1950s onwards Calder became increasingly concerned with making large-scale outdoor sculptures, making over three hundred monumental works that were placed in city plazas, corporate lobbies, airports and museum during the post-war building boom. It was through an incredible act of generosity and through their friendship with Calder that Philip and Muriel Berman, the renown first owners of Hello Allentown, provided the financing for Homage to Jerusalem-Stabile (1977), a work that would prove to be the last monumental sculpture planned by Calder but which he would not live to see installed on the site he chose on Jerusalem”s Holland Square. That Calder would return to his beloved mobiles during the final year of his life is testament to the importance in which he held this forms. As such, Hello Allentown represents the pinnacle of Calder”s approach to the prevailing march towards abstraction. Calder wanted to redefine the nature of art, and of sculpture in particular, by taking it off the wall and the pedestal and breathing movement into its static form. The resulting mobiles were his revolutionary response to these ideas of movement and colour and Hello Allentown is the superb result of Calder”s unfettered imagination and his unmatched technical skill as an engineer that enabled him to produce works that spring into life with the slightest breath of wind.

[Click on image for full size]

via Freudenberger Design Studio (formerly Haus Interior)

See more of my large custom mobiles

Most of the time I use galvanized wire for my smaller mobiles which you can get at most hardware stores. It usually comes in a roll (see image below), usually 100 feet long and costs around $6 a roll. Two tips: if you can’t find it in the regular hardware section: sometimes hardware stores have wire in the dropped ceiling section and I’ve also seen wire sold in the household section as clothing line. Any place that has fencing supplies can be a good source too. If you can’t find them in any stores near you, you can get them online at a place like McMaster-Carr.

Wire comes in different gauges, the smaller the gauge number the thicker the wire. 18 gauge is very easy to bend and works fine if you’re attaching lightweight things to it like paper shapes. 16 gauge is sort of in the middle, and 14 gauge works good for a little heavier attachments (I use mostly 14 and 16 gauge for my two to three feet sized mobiles where the shapes are made of sheet metal).

If you’re planning on a mobile that’s a little bigger and a little heavier, you will have to get 12 or even 9 gauge wire, but when you go to that thickness it’s becoming increasingly hard to bend. Especially if you start using solid metal rods (rounds), you’ll need to figure out how to bend it in ways other than just with your hands and a pair of pliers. There’s a variety of rod and pipe bending tools that can be applied to certain aspects of making mobiles (if you’re willing to spend the money for one). Di-Acro benders are quality tools in the higher price range (The Art of Bending PDF by Di-Acro can be a useful resource). Or take a look at these instructions on how to make a hook bender, and there are videos on YouTube that show how to make your own rod bending tool.

If you’re planning on making a really large mobile, I recommend you use steel or aluminum rods (rounds) instead of wire, starting with 1/8 inch thick ones. You can get them at a smaller metal retailer such as Metal Supermarkets, or from a large commercial metal supplier like this one. If you’re going even bigger, using solid metal rounds makes the mobile too heavy, especially when using steel. Alexander Calder‘s giant mobile sculpture White Cascade, which measures 100 feet in height, was made with steel and weighs close to 10 tons (!). You want the mobile to move with the air currents. So for a large mobile (33 feet in height) that I made, I used hollow aluminum pipes and aluminum sheet. Despite its size, the mobile ended up weighing only about 100 pounds (45 kg). The 76 foot (23 meters) mobile by Alexander Calder at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, 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).

There’s also a table on Wikipedia that shows various data including the gauge, diameter and more of the various wire gauges.

Wire that is already straight (not in a roll) is hard to find. Welding shops sell welding rods (electrodes). They’re straight and usually come in tubes and are usually 36 inches in length, and usually start at a diameter of 1/16″. You can get them in stainless steel or aluminum. Stainless steel is stronger and heavier, aluminum softer and more lightweight. Welding rods come in different alloys. The 1/8″ 4043 aluminum alloy can be bent by hand with pliers, and it’s easy to hammer out flat quickly if needed, but it’s stiff enough to support medium sized elements without flexing. You can also use 1/16″ and 3/32″ of the 4043 aluminum alloy for small mobiles.

You can find 12 gauge straight wire (not very easy to bend by hand) that’s 6 feet long in the dropped ceiling section at Home Depot. I just checked, I don’t think they sell it online but here’s what it looks like in the store (note it comes in a pack of 50):

You can also straighten wire with the help of a drill and a vice (41 sec video), or with the help of a drill and a wooden block (6:08 min video).

Calder also used piano wire (also known as music wire) from time to time. I found straight round music wire made by K&S Precision Metals at local hardware stores and hobby stores, such as HobbyTown. You can also buy it online directly from K&S Precision Metals. I would maybe try a wire diameter of 0.035″ and 0.047″. For larger mobiles, maybe try a diameter such as 0.055″. As you increase the diameter with music wire, it gets challenging, if not impossible, to bend it with regular pliers. Music wire is stronger, it doesn’t bend as easily. As a trade-off, it allows for thinner wire to be used to make a mobile, which makes for a more sophisticated look, depending on personal preferences.

How to attach the wire (arm) to the sheet metal (shape):

Different methods of looping the wire into the two holes:

A photo of an original Calder mobile illustrating his looping technique (click on the photo for the large resolution image):

Calder seems to have preferred mechanical ways to attach parts to each other, most often with the help of loops and rivets. Most of his small to mid sized mobiles appear to be made with the two holes and a loop method. He only seems to have used welding on large mobiles and sculptures when really necessary.

In 1962, George Rickey wrote about Calder’s work: “His metalwork can be labored, clumsy and antiquated. Calder seems uninterested in expanding his command of cutting, bending and joining metal, except by farming out the big commissions to professionals – whereupon they lose his touch and the undeniable charm his technical primitivism sometimes imparts. He steadfastly refused to weld or solder or braze his joints; he has preferred to rivet or lace and crimp with wire (like a stapler), or to bolt.”

You can find a more detailed description on how to attach the arms to the shapes in my How-To Make a Mobile article on Houzz.

Additional resources for making mobiles:

• Blog post I wrote explaining some of the basics about the balance of a hanging mobile
• Blog post with mobile-making related questions that I’ve received via email and my answers
• 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

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