Science meets art in these amazing Alexander Calder Art Projects for Kids! Play with lines, shapes and colors to make beautiful sculptures and paintings! "To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect." When you think of artists, we think of slightly eccentric souls, wandering along lakes or forests with their art materials, trying to capture that elusive sun beam or bloom. The last think you'd expect is an artist who's gone and studied something as practical as mechanical engineering! But that's Alexander Calder, American artist. He's not one to fit into any kind of mould, and his works of art aren't just hung up on a wall or standing on a pedestal - they actually move! Now you see how the engineering part fits in! What you see here is Calder's famous work, the 'Cirque Calder' or Calder Circus. What you don't see here is that all the parts of this circus can move - from the performers to the animals. And that is exactly what makes Calder's work so special and unique. He was also a man of many talents; along with sculpting and painting, he also designed jewelry, rugs, tapestries and sets - he even painted an entire airplane! Alexander, or Sandy, was from a family of artists. His father and grandfather were sculptors and his mother a portrait artist. Young Sandy's first sculpture was a clay elephant, when he was four years old. He started out making jewelry for his sister's dolls and then went on to design jewelry for other well known artists and their families - Joan Miro, Georgia O'Keeffe, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall and Peggy Guggenheim. With 22nd July being Calder's birthday, we think it's the perfect time to introduce kids to this amazing artist and his works, with some fun and simple Alexander Calder art projects for kids.