" A mobile is a very modest thing"

-Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder, called Sandy by all who knew him, was born in 1898 in Lawton Pennsylvania, now a part of Philadelphia. His great grandfather and his father were sculptors, and his mother was a painter. He and his sister Peggy, who was two years older, were very close and used to play with all the games, toys and gadgets that Alexander made, as young as the age of 5.

Sandy graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Then he studied at the Arts Student League in New York. He married a woman by the name of Louisa and had two children, living both in France in Connecticut. He died in 1976.

Throughout his life, Sandy like to play with things and made thousands of objects. Games, toys, jewelry, sculptures, drawings, paintings, movie sets and costumes and of course, that for which he is most famous, his mobiles.

There are basically three types of mobiles; those that hang from the ceiling, those that stand and those that are attached to a wall. The name "mobile" was coined by Sandy's friend, the artist Marcel Duchamp. Sandy was also the inventor of another type of sculpture, the stabile, the name for which was coined by another artist friend, Joan Miro.

MOBILE ART LESSONS

• Rock and Wire Mobile

• Plaster and Wire Mobile/Sculpture