July 21, 2009
Mobile, ME News, Vol. 2, Issue 29
I’ve always been in love with him.
Since the day I first discovered, floating above me, huge chunks of steel that I instinctively knew should not be gliding gracefully, I was hooked.
Then, I discovered there was more. I embraced the wire shapes, in their strong complicated simplicity. I adored the pop of colors, always the same colors, and broad strokes of black. The hasty sketches of monumental pieces called to me, impossibly transforming ideas from the depths of possibility within an artists’ mind.
Until recently, I did not know that Alexander Calder was considered to be the inventor of mobiles.
Actually, I didn’t know that until last Sunday, when I purposefully found myself at Meijer Gardens to view a collection of Calder’s work in the outdoor sculpture garden. I started calculating how long it had been since I’d found my younger self mesmerized by a Calder mobile at a NYC museum. I can’t recall if it was the Museum of Modern Art or the Guggenheim. I bought a postcard at the gift shop, and although I no longer know if I even own that postcard anymore, I’d studied it so well, and so long, I can still envision the turnings above me now - red drifitng over grey on currents I could not feel, but knew without a doubt were there.
To some extent all artists are engineers, and all engineers are artists. While some follow a precise prescribed path to a vision, some have a vision of a precise path un-prescribed. When we consider all that is open to interpretation, it is a wonder anyone gets along at all. Yet, there in Calder’s work is preciseness, whimsy, previously un-followed paths, and an exactness of vision. All intertwined – all in harmonious balance.
And isn’t that the way we are – somewhere between vague sketches and monumental pieces?
Evolving, revolving every minute, never to be caught in exactly the same place again – moving with the currents, among the winds, never stagnant but precisely balanced in our own space, in our own way, connected to each other, independently mobile, yet exactly moved?
And isn’t that the way GOD works - in ways unknown, with whimsy and preciseness?
In this issue: Frederik Meijer, Meijer Gardens, Alexander Calder, GITC
Now posted: Scheduling Conflicts, Humor, That's Random
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