HISTORICAL TREASURES AT THE LIBRARY, PART 4 MOBILE ART

HISTORICAL TREASURES AT THE LIBRARY, PART 4

MOBILE ART

     Some interesting art mobiles are on permanent display in the Martinsburg Public Library.  The four mobiles, three of which are located in the Children’s Department and one in the Adult Department, were created by the same artist, Howard Connor, and were donated by him to the library in memory of his mother-on-law, Mrs. Roy W. (Mary) Hollis, who was a former local resident.       Some of his mobiles have been sold in art galleries in New York City and have been featured in issues of “House Beautiful” magazine.

The mobile in the Adult Department is called “Perpetual Motion.”  It is constructed of light-gauge piano wire and multi-colored plastic disks.  The mobile was made perfectly balanced, so that the wires never tangle, and it moves smoothly and lightly, if caught by a soft breeze when someone walks past it.  

This mobile has a twin, almost identical mobile, in the Children’s Department.  These mobiles were donated to the library in 1973.

                                                                

Two newer mobiles are also located in the Children’s Department.  They are a butterfly mobile and a fish mobile, made similarly but with shapes of butterflies and fishes at the end of the wires.  Mr. Conner, feeling that his disk mobiles no longer reflected his best work, donated the two new mobiles, in his mother-in-law’s memory also, to the Children’s Department in 2001.