Sculpted Steel Wall Collage

The first American to receive the prestigious Booth Fellowship to study at Cranbrook Academy of Art, designer/craftsman Paul Evans is best known for using his welding, metallurgy, and jewelry design skills to create collagelike metal furniture with sculpted, high-relief abstract forms.

Approaching furniture as abstract composition and as sculptural construction, Evans uses an aesthetic of processes and surfaces that is both controlled and accidental. By the mid-sixties and into the seventies, Evans and his shop workers were crafting sculpted steel cabinets and wall collages with high-relief decorative elements that recall the biomorphic shapes found in contemporary paintings of artists like Joan Miró as well as the playful patterns of contemporary textile design. In fabricating these works, heavy oil pigments were treated with heat and acids to create crusty-textured, multicolored surfaces.