Calder Wire Portraits

Today, we continued our exploration of different forms of art. We watched this video about the artist, Alexander Calder. He created wire portraits, calling himself an "illumination engineer." We tested out his technique using a piece of wire.

A neat thing about this activity is that the main character of our book, Chasing Vermeer is named Calder after Alexander Calder. One of the artist's most famous mobiles hangs at the National Gallery in Washington where the Vermeer painting is in our book. Coincidences are everywhere!

"Today we were inspired by Alexander Calder and we made our own piece of art using wire." ~ Desiree
"We tried to make a portrait of the wire." ~ Bianca
"Today we were trying to figure out how to make sculptures of ourselves using about 1 m of wire." ~ Owen
"I thought it was really unique that he only used wire. I hadn't ever seen art with wire before." ~ Sophia
"With the wire we made a self portrait." ~ Ina
"The author, Blue Balliett, was inspired by the artist Alexander Calder so she used his last name for the character in Chasing Vermeer. He focuses on the wire artwork and the shadow the artwork makes." ~ Jaxton
"When we watched the video, I thought it was really cool because the self portraits out of wire looking really realist." ~ Priya
"I learned that the artist Calder made wire faces." ~ Chloé