The shapes of a Calder sculpture are so bold and graphic. They make for a great canvas to write upon.
A loyal long-time fan of Spudart is the super Tom Saaristo. He’s been a wonderful encouragement all the way since the Spudart blog’s start 15 years ago.
Today is Tom’s birthday. I wanted to wish him a happy birthday on Facebook using one of his favorite artists, Alexander Calder. A Google image search for “happy birthday” “alexander calder” didn’t come up with any pre-made images with happy birthday wishes.
I found a Calder image online and wrote the birthday wishes on the sculpture.
This particular sculpture, Quatre Blancs, sold for $826,250 at a Los Angeles auction in 2015. Sorry Tom, but I didn’t spend nearly a million dollars for your birthday wish.
In fact, using this image is probably illegal. I think the Calder foundation is pretty picky about this sort of thing. Hi, Calder foundation! This is just for fun!
One of the images that did come up in a Google image search was this birthday card on Pinterest:
Pretty neat that an illustration of a trapeze/balancing act would be considered related to a Calder.
My writing covered up Calder’s signature. Maybe I should have tried to position my message so that Calder would have signed the birthday greeting along with me!