It’s fall in Portland, which means one thing: gray skies.
So it was a pleasant surprise the other day to get some sunshine. And it was an extra-pleasant surprise to see the sunshine reflect off our our current project, lighting the back wall of our shop!
We took a quick trip to Seattle, mainly to check out the Calder exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. Inspiring, of course!
We also ate at Poppy, a fantastic restaurant that we made a mobile for last year. (See October 16, 2008.) It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say Poppy was among the best meals we’ve ever had. Take our word for it, concord grape rosemary sorbet is genius.
Sometimes packaging a mobile can take as much work and forethought as the design and build processes. For example, here a few things we had to take into consideration with the Saudi Arabia mobile:
In this case, it culminated with a 15-page Mobiles for Dummies document that outlines every single aspect of reassembly. And it includes a lot of boring–but important–images like these:
The Saudia Arabia mobile is about three feet too tall to hang in our shop, so we used a local gymnasium to fully assemble it. We are so happy with the result!
Ok, so we’re not totally finished: We have a lot of work ahead getting it disassembled, packaged, and shipped abroad…
Next time you’re at Disneyland, see if you can get yourself access to the VIP lounge of Tomorrowland so you can see its latest addition–a custom-painted Ekko Balance Mobile!
We’re in the middle of a collaborative project with a design firm we regularly work with. We’re creating three 11-feet tall by 3-feet wide aluminum tubing frames, and our client is sewing fabric sleeves that will cover the frames. The translucent fabric will be airbrushed with color. Sounds intriguing!
The final piece will hang at a healthcare facility in Wisconsin. That’s our third Wisconsin-based project this fall! Is it time to relocate?
We almost forgot to mention this fun piece we did a few months ago for a private residence in New York City. The client liked our Desktop Mobile, but they requested something a bit bigger and more complex. Here’s the result: a stabile that resembles our original Desktop, but three times the size!
We completed this mobile for St. Norbert’s college in De Pere, Wisconsin. The design is similar to the mobile we created for the North Austin Women’s Hospital last fall, but we scaled down the dimensions to 12 feet tall by 16 feet wide. And, at the request of the client, we had some shapes powdered coated in bold colors, while other shapes retained a polished finish.
Here’s a mobile we just finished up for St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Appleton, Wisconsin.
The mobile hangs 10 feet tall with a 6 foot diameter. It’s made of stainless-steel tube frame. The stainless-steel shapes are brushed on one side, polished on the other size, which gives a really cool effect when the shapes spin.
To keep the mobile pristine, we shipped the mobile with the polished side fully covered.
You may have noticed in this picture that it's pitch black outside. That's because a couple of night owls finished this project at 3 a.m. Talk about workaholics.
And, in case you're wondering, here's how the mobile is shipped:
