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It’s all in the balancing points: A top mobile designer shows how to create a Calder-inspired installation of your own
Marco MahlerDecember 8, 2014
Ever since I came across Alexander Calder‘s mobiles at the National Gallery of Art twenty four years ago, I’ve been fascinated with mobiles. At first I tried my hand at minimalistic wire mobiles. After receiving requests for larger custom mobiles, what started as a hobby turned into a full-time occupation.In chronological order: my work has been featured at New York Fashion Week in Bryant Park. I’ve contributed articles about mobiles to several publications such as Make Magazine, Saatchi Art and Houzz. The 3D printed mobiles, created in a collaboration with Henry Segerman, have been featured in Gestalten’s “Printing Things – Visions and Essentials for 3D Printing” and at the 2015 3D Print Shows in California, Paris and Dubai. A series of three large custom mobiles I designed and made won 3rd Prize at the 2015 International Kinetic Art Competition, organized by KAO, the largest kinetic art and sculpture organization in the world, as part of the International Kinetic Art Exhibit and Symposium in Boynton Beach, Florida. I made a 33 foot (10 meter) mobile for a commission I won in which I competed against 22 sculptors including Zaha Hadid. I designed and made a custom mobile for Robert A. M. Stern, former dean of the Yale School of Architecture, for his room at the 2017 Kips Bay Designer Show House. In a collaboration with film director Neil Burger, I custom designed and made a large mobile for the movie The Upside, released in 2019, and starring Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart and Nicole Kidman, in which it is featured throughout the movie. In 2022, I had the privilege to custom-design and make a two-part mobile sculpture for the atrium at the Learning Commons at Kettering University, a highly innovative state-of-the-art 105,000 square-foot architectural masterpiece. In 2023, a mobile sculpture that I custom made for the TV series And Just Like That… was featured in Season 2 Episode 5.
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I’d like to explain how to make a real mobile. By a “real” mobile, I mean one in which the balance of the different parts depends on those parts, which results in much more interesting dynamics than if you just tie a number of objects to a coat hanger or a horizontal circle.
There are a number of articles on how to make mobiles with specific materials, but none of the ones that I’ve come across explain how the balance structure of a real mobile works. I’d like to provide you with a sort of blueprint for mobiles. Once you have that, you will see how to make a mobile using any materials, whether those are just some random objects you find around your house, objects specific to a season or a holiday, or some midcentury modern shapes.
Marco Mahler
Here is a large custom mobile I made out of carbon cold-rolled steel and metal rods, influenced by American sculptor Alexander Calder’s groundbreaking mobile designs. He used the same principles in his piece “Snow Flurry” (1940).
With this type of mobile, the balance of the upper parts depends on the weight of the lower parts. Therefore, all mobiles of this type are built from the bottom up, meaning you start with the lowest part of the mobile first.
More about the history of mobiles as art
Marco Mahler
How to Make a Mobile
Materials and tools:
- Steel wire (18-, 16- or 14-gauge)
- Fishing line or swivels (optional)
- Material for shaped pieces (poster board, plastic sheeting, aluminum flashing, sheet metal etc.)
- Scissors and tin snips
- Needle-nose pliers
- Drill (3/64 drill bit to make holes for 18-gauge wire, 1/16 for 16-gauge wire, 5/64 for 14-gauge wire)
1. Take two objects and connect them with an arm (a piece of wire, a stick or whatever you choose). Find the balance point on that arm. You can find it by simply holding the arm between your finger and thumb and adjusting their position as needed. If you’d like to be more exact, tie a string to the arm and move the string to the left and right until it strikes the balance you’re after.
Steel wire works well for the arms. Most hardware stores sell it in rolls of 100 feet for less than $10 per roll. If you’re making a small mobile with light attachments, you should be fine with an 18-gauge roll. If you’ll be making your mobile a little bigger, use 16- or 14-gauge wire (the smaller the gauge number, the thicker the wire).
Marco Mahler
2. Attach a second arm with one object at the end to the balance point you just found on the first part. See how next.
Marco Mahler
Joining arms: If you’re using wire for the arms, there are a few ways to connect them. You can just loop them into each other (left), or you can connect them with strings (right) or swivels (center) if you’d like the separate parts to be able to rotate. Regular fishing line or fishing swivels will do, and you can get them at any outdoor-sports store.
I make the loops by wrapping the wire around a pair of needle-nose pliers. A round-nosed pair works best (more often available at craft stores than at hardware stores), but you can make good loops with a pair of the more common flat-nosed pliers too.
Marco Mahler
3. Find the balance point on the arm of that second part using the methods described before. Make the third part with one object and one arm and connect it to the balance point on the second part.
Marco Mahler
4. Keep going up this way, making more parts and connecting them to the balance point below. You can attach them so they all point in the same direction, alternate them left and right, or arrange them in a random pattern. Do whatever you think looks good.
Tip: I put the mobile on a hook hanging from the ceiling as I work on it. I make a new part for the mobile, then I take the mobile down from the hook, attach the new part to the mobile, then put the mobile back on the hook. And so on.
Marco Mahler
5. Now let’s look at a variation similar to Calder’s “Snow Flurry.” It’s based on basically the same principle that we’ve been using. You make two separate assemblages, labeled A and B here. Then you connect the two at each of their balance points and find the new balance point on that connecting arm.
Marco Mahler
You can keep going up from there.
Marco Mahler
Attaching objects to arms: If you’re attaching flat shaped pieces to the end of the arms (whether they’re made of poster board, plastic sheeting, aluminum flashing, sheet metal etc.), one way to attach them is by making two holes in the piece. Then bend the end of a piece of wire into a rectangular hook that fits the distance of the two holes.
Marco Mahler
Loop the hook into the holes.
Marco Mahler
Then bend the wire flat to the piece as shown.
Marco Mahler
Now you have a basic understanding of how to make a mobile. Time to experiment and have fun. Look at other mobile designs and get inspired. I made all of the mobiles in this composite photo, and they are all based on the same balance structure discussed here. The possibilities are infinite.
More: Learn about the history of mobiles as art
Tell us: Have you dabbled in mobile making? Please post a photo of your project in the Comments below.
