Create a Calderesque Mobile
Alexander Calder was the most famous producer of mobiles, the freely moving sculptures that have come to represent a subsection of modern art. Making your own Calderesque mobile sculpture is interesting, fun and relatively easy to do.
Instructions
1. Begin with a long piece of thin copper wire or, if you want to use a more simple alternative, a wire hanger as your primary wire that will hang as the main vertical wire of your Calder sculpture. Straighten the wire out and then turn the end up to the beginning of the wire at different lengths in order to make 3 or 4 loops in the wire.
2. Cut between 5 and 10 butterfly wing or guitar pick-shaped figures out of a thin but relatively stiff piece of cardboard. Mold your shapes in any way you choose and make them any size. Place a small hole at the edge of each of the shapes you cut out.
3. Straighten out a few extra pieces of wire (or wire hangers) to use for your horizontally aligned wires of the mobile. Feed one of these wires through one of the holes you made in your first, vertical wire. Bend the horizontal wire up and around itself so it creates a second loop to lock itself around the loop it was fed through.
4. Hang your first wire vertically from something that allows it to hang free. Then, use thin wire or even straightened paper clips to attach your cut out shapes to the horizontal wire you just fed through the loop of your vertical wire. As you attach each shape to the horizontal wire, the balance of the sculpture's horizontal wire will tip to one side. So, balance the horizontal wire by adding the right number of shapes to each side.
5. Feed another few horizontal wires through the loops of your vertical wire and balance and decorate them with shapes so you end up with a Calderesque mobile.
