Commissioned Dimensional Wall Art

How a piece is built

Every element is cut, shaped and finished one at a time, then layered up off the panel so the piece carries real depth rather than printed shadow. On The Violet Aster each petal is profiled and chamfered individually before it is hand-painted, and the center is carved floret by floret. On the Fibonacci Sunflower Spiral the blocks are set out on a true phyllotaxis spiral and each one is hand-faceted, so the surface breaks the light differently from every angle.

Scale and construction

The Fibonacci Sunflower Spiral is 48″ × 48″ × 2″ and is built from 441 individually cut pieces in ten tones of lumber and plywood. Work is made to order in dimensional routed wood, mixed media and hand-applied finishes, so size, palette and species are set per commission rather than chosen from a catalog.

Where these belong

These are made for walls people stand in front of and walk past every day — yacht and private residential interiors, hotel and resort lobbies, corporate and institutional lobbies, and the donor-facing walls of hospitals and universities. The advantage of commissioning them here is that Brand 9 is a fabrication shop, not a studio working through a fabricator: the same crew that builds architectural signage and installs it across about 25 states and as far away as Japan builds, crates and hangs these.

Commissioning

A commission starts with the wall — its size, its light, and what the room is for. From there we develop the subject and palette, build and finish the piece in our Orange Park shop, then crate it and install it. Pieces are one of a kind; no two commissions repeat.

There is no list price, because there is no list. The number follows the work — the scale, the timber, and how much carving the subject asks for. Tell us the wall, the light, and the date it has to be on it.

Built to a specification

Most original work arrives with a photograph and a hope. Because this is a fabrication shop, a commissioned piece arrives with its numbers.

Mounting

A 3/4″ float mount is built into the back of every piece, so it stands off the wall and casts its own shadow line. The shadow is part of the work. It lifts off the fixing and hangs on a finished wall with no blocking behind it.

Weight

Around 3 lb per square foot. A 48″ square piece runs about 50 lb — closer to a large framed mirror than to sculpture.

Materials

Backer and float mount in exterior marine-grade plywood. Relief in solid lumber, chosen for where the piece is going: cedar or other untreated stock indoors, pressure-treated outdoors. Hand-painted in acrylic.

Indoors or out

We build them either way, so a covered terrace or a pool pavilion is as available as a lobby. Not a fire-rated assembly as standard — tell us early if a project needs one.

Lead time

6–8 weeks from deposit, confirmed at quotation against the date the piece has to be on the wall. 50% deposit to start; balance before delivery or at installation.

Delivery

Crated in our own shop and installed by our crews, or shipped anywhere with the mounting drawing.

See the Fibonacci Sunflower Spiral in detail →

About the artist

Bobby Hartley studied design as an undergraduate with a minor in art history, took a graduate degree on a marketing track, and later studied at Harvard Business School. He worked on early architectural visualization software — the kind later bought by Autodesk — building renderings for home and commercial builders, then spent forty years in the sign trade, carving, routing, painting and installing dimensional work in about twenty-five states and as far away as Japan. The Patterns of Nature pieces are that same hand turned to his own subjects. Read the full biography →