DIY Mid Century Modern Inspired Wall Sculpture
My husband and I are in the middle of a mid century inspired entryway renovation. On a tight budget I need to add. The majority of the budget has already been spent on four new pocket doors, hardware, paint, trim and a decorative accent wall.
So when it came to adding decorative mid century inspired wall art and accessories, the only budget friendly solution was to make a few DIY items myself. Such as this DIY mid century modern wall sculpture I made for our project.
The first thing I did for this project was to find a couple of inspiration pieces online.
Such as this one from Target online for $60.
I also found images of true vintage mid century wall sculptures such as this one available to purchase on Ebay.
The vintage piece from the 1960’s available on Ebay was over $1200! Nope, not happening. The reproductions available from Target and Wayfair were much better prices but too big for my wall.
For my version of a DIY mid century inspired wall sculpture, I used several sizes of square wooden dowels I purchased at Michaels, Gorilla Glue, and gold spray paint.
Using the images I found online of available reproduction or vintage wall sculptures as a guideline to follow, I first created a grid on graft paper with a similar design.
I taped together four 8 x 10 sheets of graft paper together to create a base for the grid. On top of the graft paper, I taped down a sheet of drafting trash paper, similar to tissue paper, over the graft paper sheets.
It was on this paper that I drew out the lines with a sharpie of the design for the dowel rod placement.
The grid lines gave me a guideline for the placement of the dowel rods about 1 inch apart, and lengths to cut them down to different sizes.
Cutting the square wood dowels was easy using a small hand saw on a cutting board from my kitchen.
From there I just played around with the placement of the dowel rods until I found a look I liked. It was like playing with puzzle pieces.
I tried laying out similar patterns to the grid both horizontally and vertically.
This part was very much like putting a puzzle together. It was fun and I changed it out several times until I had the wood dowels laid out in a pattern I liked.
Once I had a placement I liked, I glued the layers of square dowels together with Gorilla Glue and allowed it to dry overnight.
The next day, I trimmed off some of the excess glue as best as I could, took the small sculpture outside, and spray painted both sides with metallic gold spray paint.
The wood dowels absorbed lots of the spray paint so I applied multiple layers until all sides were covered.
And now I have a DIY mid century modern inspired wall sculpture for our renovated entryway.
The best part, it cost me less than $10 to make my version and just a few hours of work.
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We were watching a movie last night, and a silver metal sculpture like this was on the wall in a scene in an office!
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Very nice looking. Love your design
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May I offer a suggestion to change your last paragraph?
The best part, it cost me less than $10 to make my version and just a few hours of work.
This should read:
The best part, it cost me $10 to make my art, and just a few hours of play.
What a perfect piece of art! I love how you took the concept and made it your own. Kudos!
What did you use to remove the excess glue from the dowels? I keep thinking a straight edge cutting tool like a box opener would make gouge marks but I can't imagine, what else to use?
Great job creating your one original art piece. What is the size of your sculpture?