Texas Sculptor’s Graceful Designs Bring Beauty to the Doorstep
Susan Wallace weaves elements of nature into her designs for metal screen doors and railings. See her latest creations
In 2011, we met artist Susan Wallace and saw how she was changing the faces of houses with her sculptural metal screen door designs. Since that story posted, Wallace has received commissions from all over the country as well as in her hometown of Austin, Texas. Come take a look at the leaves, birds, flowers, geometric designs, fish and even a potbellied pig that grace her recent projects.
Off the kitchen of the same house is a screened-in porch with a hearth. “This client is into meditation, and she was drawn to my lotus design,” Wallace says. (Note the lotus painting over the mantel.) “Because the doors were 8 feet high, I was able to stretch the design out so that each lotus blossom could stand for one of the seven chakras.” There’s an identical door on the other side of the porch.
Out on the patio, Wallace applied the lotus design to a steel gate. The design was cut with a waterjet. The steel was rusted and then covered with clear coat. The door allows air flow but provides privacy from the street.
After enjoying the doors in her Texas home, the same client wanted to bring some botanical shapes and bird silhouettes to her home on Whidbey Island in Washington. Wallace researched the local birds and suggested pileated woodpeckers to grace the doors. “These birds had dynamic silhouettes, and the only difference between the male and the female silhouette is the male’s crest,” she says.
This photo shows how homeowners can enjoy the views outside through the filter of the screen door design.
This photo shows how homeowners can enjoy the views outside through the filter of the screen door design.
A client in Denver commissioned this door from Wallace. She plans on a fuller renovation of her porch in the future, but she began with the fresh new screen door.
In order to determine what kind of design would suit the client and the home, Wallace looked at many photos of the house and its beautiful grounds and gardens. “This client loved the idea of celebrating spring, so we started from there,” Wallace says. “At first she suggested butterflies and dragonflies, but I was nervous to get into insects because I have to think about scalar relationships and they are too small.” This inspired her to think a little bigger — hummingbirds. After sending her client some drawings, it was a go.
In order to determine what kind of design would suit the client and the home, Wallace looked at many photos of the house and its beautiful grounds and gardens. “This client loved the idea of celebrating spring, so we started from there,” Wallace says. “At first she suggested butterflies and dragonflies, but I was nervous to get into insects because I have to think about scalar relationships and they are too small.” This inspired her to think a little bigger — hummingbirds. After sending her client some drawings, it was a go.
This homeowner had seen Wallace’s oak leaf design online and thought it would be a great fit for his home, where the shade on this deck and patio off the kitchen comes from a large post oak. Because his door is extra tall, it has a large bottom panel. “Otherwise, stretching out the scale of this particular design would not have looked right,” Wallace says.
The homeowner loved his new door, but he wasn’t a fan of his simple black metal railing and asked Wallace if she could improve upon it. “I really studied the shapes of the leaves of the post oak for this part,” she says. The railing has been elevated from an afterthought to an integrated part of the entry experience.
“This client is a painter and the colors she chose for her family’s home are beautifully done; it’s like a paint box,” Wallace says. “Adding this design of mine just adds to the wonderful ‘Hey! I’ve got something different going on here!’ feeling the house has.”
A fish biologist’s wife commissioned this door as a gift for her husband’s at-home research area. “The background was tricky to work out with these small swordtails, as they are only around 2 inches long,” Wallace says. In addition to consulting with the husband to get the fish silhouettes just right, she also relied on his expertise about the vegetation in the pools and streams where the fish live to come up with an organic design that was to scale.
Side note: The marine biologist’s name is Gil. How great is that?
Side note: The marine biologist’s name is Gil. How great is that?
This is a tack room in an upscale barn; the door leads to an apartment upstairs. “The inspiration for this was old-fashioned general store screen doors, the kind that would have a push bar with something like a loaf of Wonder Bread on them,” Wallace says. “It’s also reminiscent of belt buckle designs.” In order to celebrate the farm, she created the silhouette of a female rider lassoing “Momos” on the top. The bottom panel is a wagon wheel with a silhouette of the clients’ pet pig, Petunia, in the center.
This Boulder, Colorado, homeowner had already commissioned Wallace to create this screen door when he came to her with a challenge: Camouflage the hole in the bricks next to the door where an old doorbell had been removed. “I didn’t want to design anything that would detract from the door,” she says. Instead she came up with a clever solution to complement it, creating a painted metal application that matched the design on the door. “It’s four pieces of aluminum painted black with a matte finish,” she says. “I sanded it a little so that it wasn’t too perfect and would work with the Boulder winters.” It’s affixed to the bricks with 100 percent silicone. The result: a hole covered up in great style.
The same client had become very interested in Wallace’s work and wanted to collaborate with her on a piece for inside his home. “This gave me the chance to explore layering in my work,” Wallace says. The base layer of the sculpture is a series of circles within a circle, with the more organic portion of the design placed in a layer atop the geometric base.
Here’s a closer look at how the shapes are layered. Wallace laid out the entire piece and bolted it together, then removed it so that the aluminum backing could be powdercoated.
In this public housing complex, the openings over the railings needed to be covered for safety reasons. “It was important that the results feel open and not claustrophobic, and to be sensitive to the people who live here and the greater community,” Wallace says. She looked to the creekside trail that flowed through the property, creating a design with a meandering path and trees, leaves and rocks around it.
The shadows the screen would cast on the wall were an important part of the design. Though you can see the perforated mesh in this photo, Wallace says that when you look at it straight on, the mesh is transparent, with only the organic design visible to the eye. “These panels were a way to create art and be protective at the same time,” she says.
The shadows the screen would cast on the wall were an important part of the design. Though you can see the perforated mesh in this photo, Wallace says that when you look at it straight on, the mesh is transparent, with only the organic design visible to the eye. “These panels were a way to create art and be protective at the same time,” she says.
At the home of a graphic designer and a musician, Wallace found inspiration in a big loquat tree that shades a good portion of the house. “This was a tough project because the leaves have a lot of big, dimensional veins — I used many pieces of metal in this one,” she says. Although at first glance the doors appear identical, closer inspection reveals that they aren’t.
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Her clients were interested in adding some birds to the botanical design. “This was the first time I used cutouts,” Wallace says. The project led to similar doors with silhouettes of other birds, which Wallace chooses from species that are indigenous to the home’s region.