A
note from gallery owner Roy Saper:
Arthur Bauman is
clearly the best
mobile designer and fabricator working today. His talent is
beautifully evidenced by the phenomenal designs shown in these pictures
of
mobiles now on display here at Saper Galleries.
Need
something larger or to accommodate a specific site? Contact
us now for details on commissioning an Arthur Bauman for your home
or office!
Bauman's
mobiles are of great volume yet they are light and airy and without
weighty mass. They look great from every vantage point.
Their design is exquisite when viewed from directly beneath the mobiles
where one can fully appreciate the relationship between adjacent pieces
in terms of spacing and dimensions of the fabricated elements.
With the slightest air movement Arthur Bauman mobiles are in slow but
continual motion.
I
bought a Bauman mobile many years ago as the first
work of art I hung in my own home. I am certain you would enjoy
one, too!
And,
from the artist:
I began making mobiles in 1968 in Amman, Jordan, while
stationed at the U.S. Embassy. I saw two films on Alexander
Calder which the State Department had sent around to the more isolated
diplomatic posts and I was entranced. So in my leisure time
I took up making mobiles, at first with whatever materials were at
hand: clothes hanger wire, tin can tops, and even yarn left over from
my wife's rug-making.
Then,
seriously hooked, I bought some tools, aluminum sheet and spring steel
wire. I continued to make mobiles at posts to which I was
assigned, and gave three exhibits abroad -- in Jordan, Morocco and
Belgium.
In
1972, while on leave in the United States, I gave an exhibit in Fort
Myers, Florida, and the owner of a gallery on nearby Sanibel Island
offered to show my work. Later, while still in the Foreign
Service, I gave exhibits in Germany and at the National Museum Art
Gallery in Singapore.
Eventually,
in 1981, I left the Foreign Service to work full time on mobiles, and
have since given half a dozen exhibits in this country. My work
is currently shown in several galleries in the United States.
Anyone who makes mobiles owes a huge debt to Alexander Calder, who
after all invented the art form. But I soon developed my own
distinctive style and artistic vocabulary.
I am especially interested in structure and in creating a piece that is
well balanced esthetically from whatever angle you may see it -- with
its three-dimensionality.
And when you watch a mobile move in an air current, as it shifts and
revolves, you add the fourth dimension, time. As with music and dance,
it's a performance.