He struck me as someone compelled to integrate art into his life at every chance …

by Loretta Fontaine

rtists have a reputation for being difficult. Brooding. Unstable. When my mother-in-law recently mentioned to my daughter that Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear, my daughter optimistically offered, “Grandma, it was only part of his ear!” Now that’s what I love — a five year old’s take on life can counter any darkness.

Illustration by Dave Fontaine

I’m reading the autobiography of Alexander Calder right now. I’ve always wanted to learn about an artist who did not brood but embraced unabashed joy. Eight years ago I was in Washington, D.C. and an exhibit on Calder’s work was being put up at the National Museum of Art. As I was strolling along, the twirling, spinning Calder mobiles perched outside the museum caught my eye and enticed me to go inside. The museum lobby was full of unpacked crates and the exhibit was not ready for viewing, but the gift shop was open.

In the gift shop I picked up a heavy book on Calder and started looking through it. Now this was something wonderful. This artist seemed to be smiling most of the time. The pictures of his kitchen showed that he made most of the kitchen implements. Clever and inventive forged forks, ladles and strainers hung over the stove. He struck me as someone compelled to integrate art into his life at every chance, even to pick up a serving of pasta. The few paragraphs of text I read spoke of how Calder loved to make little wire doodads for any children who came to visit his family. I was charmed.

So now, years later, I’m reading the auto-biography. Is my initial impression ringing true — that Calder was an artist with an unabashed sense of joy? The answer is yes. He describes in his book a life that never lost a child’s curiosity and wonder, a life full of grand exploration. “The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the universe, or part thereof,” Calder says, “For that is a rather large model to work from.”

Born in 1898, his father and grandfather were sculptors, his mother a painter. His parents gave him his own basement workshop to make toys as a child. He received a degree in engineering but didn’t fare well in the profession, and then tried his hand in the arts. To support himself as a young artist he drew cartoons for newspapers and designed “Toddler Toys” for a Wisconsin company. For amusement he made an elaborate circus of tiny wire figures in 1925 that he would perform for his friends.

And that zest for fun, for play, foreshadowed a fabled career covering many fields — sculpture, drawings, paintings, tapestries and rugs. I was surprised to find out that he even made jewelry.

Last week I spoke with one of the children Calder made doodads for. Alix Bluh, a wonderful studio jeweler from San Francisco, Calif., knew Calder when she was a very young girl in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Her grandmother was a friend of Calder’s, and she spent her summers near his home and studio in Roxbury, Conn. Bluh remembers being six years old and watching him work.

“He was a huge man and I would literally stand under him,” Bluh recalls. “He just made everything look so effortless. He would pick up pliers and wire and all of a sudden there would be a bird!” Everyone in the area would have Calder objects — birds and other objects made from wire and found objects like tomato sauce and fruit cans — nonchalantly hanging around in their houses.

“He was an ebullient person, laughing a lot, making jokes,” Bluh says, “He had a lot of positive energy. I remember being overwhelmed with the size of everything in his studio. Sculptures that looked like dinosaurs! I really cherish those memories.”

Calder gave Bluh little wire objects and a tiny miniature stabile. (“Stabile” was the term given to Calder’s grounded sculptures.) Calder’s stabiles can soar as tall as 80 feet. Bluh can hold her gift, her stabile, in the palm of her hand. And perhaps there was another gift he gave her. Bluh recalls while the other kids would run off and climb on the sculptures in the studio, she was happier to watch Calder, entranced. I think he gave her the gift of joyful inspiration.