Artists and Art - Alexander "Sandy" Calder

 image from http://calder.org/home.html

When we first received the Picasso, That's Who! CD, (which you can get as a mp3 download at Amazon) I was pleased that I wasn't familiar with some of the artists on the list.  Alexander Calder was one of these artists.  Listening to the song,

"His friends called his art mobiles
For the way they float around
He also sculpted stabiles
'Cause they stand firm on the ground"

I deducted that he was a sculptor.

It turns out he invented mobiles.  Although, I'm not sure if he invented them or if he just innovated them as art work.

He was known as Sandy by most people and he liked to create toys from stuff he had around his house from the time he was little.  His mom was a painter and his dad a sculptor, so art was prevalent in his life from the beginning.

We started our study of Alexander Calder by listening to the song on Picasso, That's Who! and then, googling  Alexander Calder art to see just what he had made.  This fish is pretty neat:

 One of his many mobiles.

Then we looked on Youtube for his circus.  He made detailed little circus figures that actually did things and then he performed his circus for his friends.



We read 

 

Alexander Calder (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)

and

Sandy's Circus: A Story About Alexander Calder 

I recently purchased Meet the Masters on Homeschool Buyer's Coop and Alexander Calder is one of the artists in Track D.  We completed that lesson.  There is a slide show presentation with teaching notes and then a corresponding art project for each artist.  Bear wanted to do her own sculptures and mobiles so we didn't bother with the project from Meet the Masters (although we did draw some inspiration from the photo of the advanced project).  We spent a lot of time on creating!

You'll need some wire and some beads to do our project.  And the mobile uses a chopstick, but a skewer would work.  I happened to have wire left over from my scrapbooking days. 

My Alexander Calder inspired mobile.

 Bear working on a sculpture of paper.

 J-jo joining in on the wire sculpture making.

 His finished work.

 Bear's wire sculpture.

 Bear's other wire sculpture.

 Bear's Alexander Calder inspired mobile.