The Gift of Metal Art Runs in Our Family!

Helen Johnson Hornberger is a gifted artist who works with metal. Her specialty is realistic metal flowers. Helen began experimenting with flower making with tin cans in the 1950s. She even asked her folks to save the cans that their frozen grapefruit juice came in, as the material was soft enough to easily shape. Later, Helen began to use sheets of thin copper for her creations. She enlisted her husband, Dwight, in bending heavy copper wire for stems as she directed him in getting the shape she needed.

 

In her words, “I found myself fully challenged by this new form of craftsmanship and the impossible goal of trying to duplicate the intricate beauty of living flowers. By trial and error, I devised designs that could simulate flower parts and structures in the lightweight metals. I experimented with types of paint, with light and color, to decorate the metal.”

 

As she perfected her craft, she received many requests and commissions for specific flowers and arrangements. She taught classes in tole flower making and, in 1972, published a book titled, The Art of Making Tole Flowers and Ornaments. Although it’s now out of print, you can find a copy at the Wichita Public Library.

 

Eventually, she had the opportunity to create a Fifty State Flowers arrangement for the Smithsonian Institution. Over the years, she made five more sets of the fifty state flowers, some as commissions and others for family members. The Sedgwick County Historical Museum recently acquired the set she kept for herself. That arrangement is awaiting a permanent spot in one of their displays.

 

Most of her friends and family cherish a piece or two of her art, given to them as a holiday or wedding gift. In recent years, she has continued to create metal flowers and has taught Shari, Brad, Dee, and Emily the basics of her craft. Helen has lost count of how many flowers she’s created, in almost seventy years of work, but it’s nearing a thousand!

 

Helen resides in an assisted living facility in Wichita and at 97 years of age, she is still constructing flowers.