Alan Steinbach, who has moved permanently from California to his lifetime summer home of Woods Hole, will lead a two-part workshop on one of his favorite avocations, mobile making, at the Woods Hole Public Library in June.
Almost every summer in recent memory, Alan has entered one of his mobiles made of found objects from the seashore at the Woods Hole Art Show in the Community Hall. In this workshop at the Library, Alan will teach others how to create these arcane art objects. Most of Alan’s publicly displayed mobiles have been huge, but prospects are that the ones coming out of this workshop will be smaller.
He says that he created his first mobile “on a beach on the West Coast of New Zealand in the company of a small boy who was afraid he would be bitten by sand flies. To pass time and keep him engaged, I suggested we build a sand fly trap. I was thinking of the traps built for dreams…dreamcatchers. I suggested, that if we built something that was attractive and moving, perhaps it would attract the sandflies away from biting him.”
He continued “Of course, lurking in my subconscious there was a lot of Sandy Calder, whose 1931 creations led to the name of “mobile art”. But mobile art is probably as old as art itself, and mobiles as I make them belong to a mini-genre of kinetic art. You’ve seen it in items ranging from dreidels and garden windmills to kinetic ceilings”.
The heart of Alan’s philosophy of mobiles is included in his comment “I like to play with boundaries, help trash to rise up and fly, place beautiful objects in shifting perspective, link approach and avoidance”.
He concludes with “If making things that balance and move really interest you, I invite you to join me at the Woods Hole Library. Session 1 will be about balance and movement. I bring all the materials. Session 2 is about creating the mobile you envision.”
The dates of this workshop are June 15 and June 22, both Thursday afternoons, starting at 4:30 PM and finishing at 6 PM. People should register in advance by calling the Library at 508-548-8961. The program is free and open to the public.