Office Wall Art

Office Wall Art With Something to Say

Office wall art has a harder job than most art in the house. It sits in the frame behind you on every call. It is the thing people study while they wait. And you have to look at it more hours a week than anything else you own. So it ought to be worth the staring. This is office art with a point of view — Texas cities built out of their own signage, hand-lettered lines from Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a county courthouse under a big sky, and one perfectly serious portrait of a bottle of Liquid Paper.

Home Office Art, and the Other Kind

The two rooms want different things. A home office can afford to be personal — the city you are from, a line you actually live by, something that makes the video background yours instead of the landlord's. A professional office needs to read clean from the doorway and not require explaining to a client. Both are in here. The photomontages, skylines and street-name maps handle the second job; the typography and quote pieces handle the first. For a partner's wall or a new associate, the typography and quote prints and the Tarrant County Courthouse do the most work.

Abstract Office Art and the Quiet Wall

Not every wall wants a wisecrack. The graphic pieces — city nicknames set in type, the Austin letters, the black-and-white skylines, a pen-and-ink banana study — read as abstract office art from across a room and only resolve into a subject once someone walks up to them. That is a useful quality in a room where people are trying to concentrate.

Questions

What makes good office wall art?
Something with a second look in it. A piece that is legible from the doorway, holds up on a video call, and rewards the person who gets close enough to read the fine print. City photomontages and typography do both jobs well.

What works over a desk?
One wide horizontal piece centered above the monitor, or a tight pair stacked to one side so the desk lamp is not fighting the frame. Long-format photomontages were drawn for exactly this proportion.

Is this a good gift for someone's new office?
One of the better ones — it marks the occasion without being a plaque. Lawyers get the courthouse, transplants get their home city, and anyone with a sense of humor about the job gets the Liquid Paper.

Does it come framed?
No. Everything is in standard sizes, so an off-the-shelf frame fits without a custom order.

Original family artwork by Betsy, Caya, Carl and Tavi Crum, working in Texas. Printed to order.

Working nearby: Carl Crum's photomontages gather the city work in one place, Fort Worth art covers home turf, Austin, Dallas and Houston art prints cover the transplants, wall art for guys handles the studies and man caves, and Texas wall art under $100 is where to start if you are furnishing a whole hallway of them.