CD Mobile

Kris Fontes                                                   Union City High School

Doesn’t it seem like AOL sends you a compact disk every day in the mail?  How many do you think you’ve received in the last ten years?  Have you looked at them and tried to figure out a use for them?  Five years ago I began saving the disks that filled up my mailbox; I also asked friends and family to save them for me.  Even though I had no idea what I was going to do with these shiny silver disks I began gathering them.  Occasionally I would count them and put them back in a box, still stymied as to what they could become.

Last summer I decided to concentrate on creating “something” with my collection of useless and unsolicited CD’s.  Here I sat with the raw material and an empty mind.   I had no real concept.  Holding the disks against my ears, I decided not to make earrings, but I was intrigued by the idea of hanging the disks.  Could the disks become part of a mobile?  My mind was rushing ahead with visions of Calder - like mobiles hanging from every ceiling in our school!

As middle school art teacher, seventh and eighth grade students can elect to take my class.  I see the students for only 45 minutes a day for 18 weeks and I teach from a cart.  I am constantly looking for projects that are 1.) aligned with the standards  2.) engaging and 3.) not too messy.  A typical class has 29 students.

Recently, I read an article on the Op Art movement and, the artist, Bridget Riley, one of Britain’s most famous painters who is known for her unique op art paintings.  One painting in particular caught my attention, “Movement in Squares” created in 1961.  This work utilized positive and negative space, or counterchange, which means “to make checkered; variegate.”  http://www.postershop.com/Riley/Riley-Movement-in-Squares-serigraph-2803038.html  Finding information about Ms. Riley was simple, a Google search turned up hundreds of links to her life and art.  To introduce the students to Riley, I created a simple Power Point presentation of her powerful Op Art pieces.

As I looked at the disks, I tried to imagine what material I could use to create a positive/negative image. On my cart I had two packages of Scratch Art Contrast-O that I had inherited from the former art teacher and had not yet put it to use.  The description of the product from Nasco’s catalog reads “this product is constructed of special plastic film. The top layer is white, the bottom black. Using a sharp knife, cut through the white layer, then peel off the sections of your design that you want black. Create a positive, negative, or counter-change design.”  I decided to try sticking the black side of the Contrast-O onto the graphic side of the CD, leaving the solid silver side untouched.  Using spray glue, I sprayed the disk first and then laid it onto the Contrast-o.  Once the disk was attached, I used an Xacto blade to cut around the disk and free it.  I now had a disk with one side silver and the other side white. 

 With a pencil I drew lines on the white side of the disk.   I made sure that the lines intersected.   Some lines I made straight using a ruler, and others I made very organic and free.  Using a sharp Xacto knife, I began to cut through the white layer on all my pencil lines.   You can cut through all the lines first or just do one area at a time.  Once the lines had been cut I used the point of the knife to raise a section of the white to expose the black underneath.  This was repeated until every other shape had been lifted and removed.  

Each student was required to make three disks, the rationale for this was simple, the students would be more comfortable and confident by the third disk and that would be the one that would be graded.  To my amazement, each student mastered the medium immediately and I ended up with 180 or more op art CD’s.

Time to hang them up. Time to find out more about Alexander Calder and his mobiles. Calder said, “I want to make things that are fun to look at.” Me too.  His art danced.   I wanted ours to dance too.

The San Diego Museum of Art has a lesson on Calder at http://www.sdmart.org/education-plans.html and I relied heavily on the information from this site.

I spent more than a few nights wide-awake trying to figure a way to hang these circular masterpieces.   I needed a frame.  My daughter had recently taken down the canopy over her bed and it would be perfect for my purpose.  The canopy was made from PVC pipe and in the shape of a rectangle, about 6’ long by 4’ wide. I covered the PVC pipe with black electrical tape to make it appear a part of the mobile and not a separate element.  A hula-hoop was also covered with black tape and centered inside the canopy allowing me more room to hang the disks.

This frame was then hung from the ceiling in my Graphic Design computer lab, the perfect spot!

At home, I patiently heated a metal skewer on my gas stove and made/melted holes in each disk.  Each disk had two holes, top and bottom.  Using fishing wire I attached three disks to each other, which I then hung from either the canopy or the hula-hoop.  This part of the assembly was done in stages and with the help of several high school students.  Finally, the disks were hung, the mobile created. 

           I sat at my desk and watched as a current of air moved the disks from side to side, constantly moving, weaving, and swaying…dancing just like Calder.