Mobiles

Image: "Cagarras" - 2005 (110 x 90 cm)

I have a passion for building mobiles. It was my brother Andreas who has first showed me the art of Alexander Calder, a gracefull artist, father of all mobiles. He had the idea to build a mobile as a gift for my mothers' birthday. I must have been around 20 years old, maybe younger. We used painted wood and wire. Today I make them out of steel wire and painted aluminum sheet, which I cut to shape.

It is the ballance and movement which enchants me about the mobiles. It is an interesting mental excercise, concentrating on building a small art object with your bare hands, in a plastic, physical effort. Constantly trying to find the right ballance in between an increasingly complex moving structure. You bend and form flexible levers and weights which are constantely moving.

And in that sense I see a close relation to the boat I am building, a tacking outrigger. Outriggers, as proas, have a charming sense of ballance. The challenge is to maintain the wind powered levers, weights, and dynamic forces in ballance.

Look at the images of flying proas. Aren't they wonderfull work-mobiles? crafted, sewn, lashed together, in a constant effort to keep things in ballance and moving? and fast in this case! And isn't our life just like that? Constant juggling. Juggling in a positive sense. The juggler as the master in looking smart, while keeping all pieces moving harmoniously through the air. I can see clearly what fascinates me about proas. About sailing in general, of course. But in monohulls or catamarans, the ballance is blunter. I prefer the daring push of the envelope. How far can one go?

But the ballance aspects in mobiles go beyond that, because, of course, you need to find the visual ballance too. The visual weight of shapes and colours need to compose the idea that you want to express. Whether this is to show a landscape, a plant, an animal or maybe an abstract.

Cagarras, the mobile on top of this post, is an examle of a mobile inspired by a landscape. And in that aspect very much related to the big landscape paintings of Rio e Janeiro's coastline. It shows an abstraction of the "Cagarras" island group. Which is located 4 miles out from Arpoador rock. The bigger, rounder black shapes are the islands, and then come all the birds, fregattes and seagulls, flying around the rock below the sun and a cloud on a long lever. Any small breeze will make this mobile gently show the landscape from all angles, making an intersting birds-eye view. As an abstract, ilustrated and animated 3D map. ;-)

Heliconia flower. Heliconias are a subtropical specias, which is abundant here in RIo de Janeiro.

The wire itself is a distinct line in the "drawing" of the mobile. Its visual dynamic needs to fit. I use diferent strenghts of wire. This is why I prefer using the more flexible steel wire than the inox. The inox is too strong and inflexible to be decently formed to the mobile. I like to work it like clay, and form the object, the small moving sculpture.

The mobile Heliconia, below, is inspired in the heliconia plant, whith its exotic red flower of peculiar plasticity. I've already made an extensive series of Heliconia mobiles, maybe 40. Big and small. Each one an individual, of course. The largest are almost 2 meters wide. This one measures about 130x90cm.

The mobile below had a spectacular place in my brother Andreas living room, with a spectacular view over the Sugar Loaf. I was immensly proud and happy about that! Oh boy! Now my brother moved to Atlanta, USA. The mobile was transported in a custom built wooden box... I wonder where and how it hangs now...?

Image: Heliconia mobile - 2005 (130 x 90 cm)