I’m a kinetic sculptor specializing in mobiles. I make handmade mobiles, large custom-made mobiles, 3D printed mobiles and kinetic sculptures.
I discovered an excellent and inspiring resource today, the work and website of Marco Mahler. Apparently, I just missed out, as he and his family had been living here in Portland but recently moved to the east coast. At any rate, his blog contains quite a bit of helpful information on the history, construction, and design of mobiles and stabiles. I am super grateful for this generosity. His tips have helped get my creative juices flowing, and I've finally got some direction and ideas about making that I'm excited about.
Additionally, last week a colleague told me about tape casting, a technique used by industry to create very very thin sheets of ceramic material. Very small, thin pieces (< 0.3mm) of ceramic are manufactured this way as components for capacitors. A few folks up at Alfred U. have started playing with this technique in a creative way. The result of this process is a raw/wet clay material that is as flexible as a thin sheet of vinyl, and can even be stored in a roll. I've had a difficult time finding precedent for creating mobile sculpture/art with ceramic elements, wondering if the weight of ceramic had anything to do with that. But while I read through Mahler's website, I suddenly realized the product of tape casting is so similar and yet fascinatingly different from the traditional mobile materials, sheet metal and plexi/acrylic.