Rarely - If Ever - Asked Questions
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- Who is this Alexander Calder of whom you speak?
You can't spell mobile without Alexander Calder (and a bunch of other letters). The story goes that Albert Einstein, after watching a full 40-minute cycle of A Universe, a mechanized Calder mobile exhibited at MOMA, said simply "I wish I had thought of that." I'm proud to share in the experience - with no lesser a mind than Albert Einstein's - of not thinking of something we both wished we had.
My designs are intended to be original, but are surely heavily influenced by Calder's work. As a relative newcomer, I hope to draw on him less and less, but it's hard to cast aside the guy who invented the form.
Best place to start to find out about Calder, his mobiles, his circus and his many other spectacular art forms is www.calder.org.
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- What materials do you use?
The individual pieces are cut from .016" thick aluminum sheets.
16 gauge OOK galvanized steel wire is my go-to brand and size. Thicker or thinner is used as needed.
I prime the pieces with Liquitex Gesso and paint them with Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic paint. For the wire elements, which are very difficult to paint with a brush, I use Liquitex paint markers.
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- What's your current starting tool line-up?
There's a great deal of wire to be cut. Quality wire cutters feel good in the hand, cut cleanly and produce a crisp and satisfying "snap" on impact.
I use jewelers snips to cut the aluminum. (Several of the tools I use come from the jewelry realm.) Anything bigger or heavier will work against you.
A small cordless drill is useful both for wire straightening (explained below) and drilling holes in the aluminum. The holes are the attachment points for the wire. An automatic center punch works well to make small indentations in the metal to position and steady the drill bit as it engages the metal.
I flatten the wire ends (to attach them to the aluminum pieces) using a hammer and a railroad track anvil, which I love. Great heft, perfect dimensions and a beautiful muted clang.
Reverse action tweezers - which stay closed in the rest position and open up when squeezed - help in locating each element's balance point. The balance point is where a loop in the wire will be formed, which is how the piece I'm looping will be attached to the next piece up the ladder. To locate the balance point, I hold the piece up in the tweezers' jaws and let it hang freely. I then move the tweezers along the length of the wire until I find the spot at which the piece hangs at the angle and orientation I'm looking for - the balance point - which is where I'll make the loop.
Mobiles are lousy with loops, which are best made with looping pliers. Looping pliers are also used to roll an existing loop up or down the wire to adjust the balance point.
Good bent and flat nose pliers - with smooth, non-marring jaws - see heavy use. It's hard to describe without visuals but, as an example, to open and close the jump rings used to join pieces together without distorting the ring, you must grip the ring at two points, one on either side of the ring's opening, and slightly twist the two sides of the ring away from each other to open, and back toward each other to close.
A light-duty vise that can be clamped securely to your work surface provides a solid anchor point for wire straightening and other vise-enhanced tasks.
And, finally, goggles. No good can come of bits of aluminum and wire flying around your unprotected face. And from everything I've heard, the experience of metal fragments piercing your eyeballs is best avoided.
If you enjoy tools, each of these tasks can easily be made far more complex, the benefit of which, of course, is the need for more and better specialized tools and devices.
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- How do you straighten all that coiled wire?
This one is elegant and obvious in retrospect, and it's a shame you can only discover it once. I don't know who came up with it, but I'm quite sure it wasn't me. Here's how it works:
Wire generally comes coiled in a package. After uncoiling, cutting and roughly straightening a length of wire, you insert one end directly into a drill chuck, and tighten it down as you would a bit. Secure the other end of the wire to a vise or other stationary anchor point positioned straight out in front of the drill.
Hold the drill so that the wire is taut between the drill chuck and anchor point. It doesn't need to be very tight, but just taut enough to eliminate slack. Run the drill on low and in a matter of seconds the wire will emerge shiny, straight and proud.
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- Are there any books or other materials on making mobiles you can recommend?
Googling "how to make mobiles" brings up a wealth of information. There are several tutorials on YouTube that are worth tracking down. As well as many that are less worth tracking down. Though not instantly available on line, I found John Lynch's How To Make Mobiles quite helpful. It dates back to the 1970's and is no longer in print, but used copies can be found. I've developed a different approach to a number of the tasks, but it's a clear and practical introduction to the basic techniques and principles.
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- What's with naming your mobiles?
I'm conflicted on this one. It feels a bit precious. But it's cumbersome to have to repeatedly say "you mean the second one down in the third column on the right?" Some of the names are intended to reference some aspect of the design, others are titles of Charlie Parker tunes and some are just arbitrary.
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- Is there some trick or secret to making these things?
At the very top of the list is to start at the very bottom. Build from the bottom up. I don't know if building from the top down is possible - somebody must do it. But had I not learned this early on, I would still be on my first mobile, which would still be seriously lopsided.
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- In what line of business is DogsAndBearsStudios engaged?
DogsAndBearsStudios is a non-funded, often dormant, media arts production virtual facility. In addition to our exploding mobile enterprise, we're excited to have a book I'll never finish "in the can." Some years back we produced and exhibited - once - a strikingly unsophisticated short film featuring mostly static photographs of dogs and bears. Our music division has released two mp3's to date, both of which were hailed for their brevity.
And we pet sit. For dogs. And bears.
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- Are these really all the questions you've rarely - if ever - been asked in all your life?
There are others I've been asked even more infrequently but they have nothing to do with mobiles. And there are truckloads of questions I've never been asked at all.
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- Do you have dogs? Are they named Frieda and Mo? Would you happen to have a picture of them handy?
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- What do you do with all that dough that MidAirMobiles must throw off for you?
A substantial portion goes to animal rights, protection and preservation efforts. The rest goes into research, development, materials, wages, taxes, placement fees, advertising, overhead, sourcing, upkeep, capital improvements, maintenance, reserves, cybersecurity, legal and accounting fees, and candy.
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