Calder’s legacy more than child’s play, says new OCMA show

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Does Alexander Calder’s artwork, with its bold primary colors and simple geometry, seem like child’s play to you? Just try to make a Calder-style mobile yourself. That’s what the 38-year-old L.A. sculptor Jason Meadows did last winter for the nursery of his twin sons.

‘The mobiles look really easy, but they are very difficult to balance,’ he says. ‘It takes only one try at making a mobile to understand that Calder was a marvel at engineering. His inventiveness is amazing,’ he says. Meadows is one of seven contemporary artists in a show that tries to chart some of Calder’s influences in contemporary art, “Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy,” opening at the Orange County Museum of Art on April 10.

Click here for more from Meadows on Calder, the modernist so ubiquitious he almost seems invisible.

-- Jori Finkel
www.twitter.com/jorifinkel