I very much enjoy Alexander Calder's artwork - 'kinetic sculptures', many of them. They have balance and move in the wind and take on pleasing airy transformations while in the grips of the powerful pressure of earth's gravity
Unlike some of the other famous artists I've been writing about, it turns out Calder occasionally uses stones in some his 'mobiles'.
That's good because, I think there's a great connection between an installation of stones, suspended in the air moving in a beautiful delicate balance, and dry laid ones, held in place on the ground (yet able to move) in a pleasing network of random rock shapes and sizes.
Both art forms seem to have made friends with gravity. Both are able to yield to nature to some degree of another. Both deal the with elements of form and movement.
After all, stones are at their best when they are ‘mobilized’. They stay well-connected, even when they are not tightly regimented, that is, not forced to be locked together (mortared?) in an order that makes the whole thing totally immobile and dead looking.
Stones can stay together a long time, in a wall, nestled in a state of connectivity. They all keep within their 'orbit', in constant structural conformity. They yield because they are placed together employing only the basic restraints of gravity and physics, thus allowing for a constant flow of invisible interactions. The wall is a kinetic work, not an uninterested static blob, all the while never losing balance or continuity.
Stones held together this way will always be something to behold.
The whole thing becomes a ‘moving’ experience.
