My Mid-Century Modern Metal Wall Art

Penthouse Party and My Mid-Century Modern Art Line

For a while now I have been wanting to create a mid-century modern style line of metal wall art.

Penthouse Party by Paula Gibbs, 48″ x 24″

However, it could not look contrived. It is too easy to create art with a bunch of boomerangs and all the other cartoon-y shapes associated with mid-century modern era. I see a lot of contemporary stuff like that especially on Etsy.com. If you look at art from that era and there are none of those shapes.

Finding Inspiration

I did a lot of searching and found an mid-century artist who did most of his work in ceramic. It completely inspired me! Yes! Now this is a style I can apply to my metal wall art (link). The artist is Roger Capron. Most of his art was in the form of furniture, lamps, vases, etc. What I liked were the ceramic tiles that topped coffee tables. The shapes he designed are fabulous.

I took the inspiration and some of his designs and started making my own mid-century modern art as metal wall art. My designs are quite structured and controlled, not my favorite aspect of my art, yet I am very happy with how these pieces are coming out. The colors and shapes against lots of exposed sanded metal results in a fun and light feeling. That is what I think anyway.

Roger Capron ceramic tiles

To get the metal to look nice, it gets sanded a couple of times. First, I use a small random orbital sander to rough up the surface. Then I hand sand in a back-and-forth motion that gives the metal a very bright, clean look, with what I call a “grain”.

There is a lot of taping involved in getting my shapes. It is a good deal of time and effort. I try to avoid curved designs with two colors right next to each other. I don’t like taping on top of painted surfaces because I can see where the tape was even though others might not.

Next: Smaller Metal Wall Art

At the time I am writing this, I have only created two of these mid-century modern pieces. Both are 24” by 48”. In my next round of pieces some smaller pieces are in order to appeal to art lovers on a lower budget. Although I have several designs created, I have not determined the size. There is an issue with what substrate to use. Small wood panels are a lot of labor. The other option is solid wood planks cut into sections. But then there is a limit on width since readily available wood planks are only 12” wide. I will get it figured out…