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When I was 12 years old, I
spent an afternoon with Calder in his studio, watching him and playing
with scraps of the aluminum he used. To this day I recall the
experience vividly. The barn that served as his studio had a large
expanse of glass facing west. The workbench was overcome with tools of
all kinds and sizes, metal scrapings, all sorts of pliers, files, saws,
drill, shears that he had retrofitted with spring wire so to have them
open up by themselves. There was artwork everywhere, some waiting to be
finished most already painted hanging from the ceiling, strewn about on
the ground, in the corners... everywhere.
I remember watching him cutting out
this very neat shape with these enormous (to my young eyes at least)
shears. I loved that shape, the lines were very neat and the sharp
points gave the shape a dynamic appeal. He then switched to his files
and continued to refine the shape he had just carved out. He then
proceeded to cut off the sharp points and rounded them with his file.
When I asked why he was doing this (disappointed that in my view he had
just ruined the shape) he explained that you had to soften the edges of
the shapes so that people would not hurt themselves with the points or
the edges. When it was time to leave, I asked if I could take home some
of the scrap aluminum that was on the floor and he said it was OK.
That evening, I took my metal scraps
to my father’s workshop. I readily decided to try making one of those
nifty things called Mobiles. Of course, I did not have at my disposal
the tools and the full set of materials, but try I did. I failed
miserably. The metal was too thick for my father's over-worn and dull
shears. Most of all, I had not watched the process quite attentively
enough. Where a mobile is constructed from the bottom up, my project
was conducted from the top down. Whenever you add something, you have
to correct every preceding balancing point. A few days later, when I
shared my frustration with Calder, I was set straight. He said that you
must start from the bottom! Eventually I was able to secure a couple of
spools of recycled chicken wire that had all sorts of kinks and
required a lot of massaging to straighten out. Later, I was enlightened
to the fact that Mobiles are made with “piano” also called “music” wire
which has spring quality and retains its given shape very well. Instead
of the thicker gauges that Sandy used, I used aluminum coffee cans
which were much thinner and easier to cut with my blunt old shears. My
sister Eva still has one of the first mobiles I made at the time, the
wire was hardly straight, the shapes are all bumpy and irregular but
there is movement and some dynamics there.
Later, I started making Mobiles for my
friends and family. I even got to trade one with Max Ernst, a family
friend, for one of his posters. Calder once told my mother that I had
understood the linking and attachments well. Of course, that is just
the rudiments of Mobile making, but it was a start. The afternoon of my
fifteenth birthday, Calder handed me a very special gift, a pair of his
Sargent pliers that he always had on his person.
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