john t. unger studio

A Nice Shot of FireBowls at Joe Hindley's Gallery in Sawyer, Michigan

Johnny Evers Mosaic, Centerpiece of the Chicago Cubs Triptych

Johnny Evers Mosaic: Chicago Cubs Triptych
Johnny Evers Mosaic Portrait, 2006 vitreous glass mosaic, steel frame. 48" H x 60" W x 1.5" D Commission
It's nearly impossible to reduce a six foot wide mosaic to a 600 pixel wide image and get it to look the way it should! The grout lines tend to create a moiré distortion that obscures the detail. Click on the image above to see a larger (1863 wide x 1223) version. You might prefer to download it to your computer and view it in an image viewer that gives you more control than the browser. Below are a few pictures from the installation of the piece. The first is Tony Racky admiring his new mosaic. You can see from the photo that the mosaic is pretty much life-size. The next two pics show the mosaic on the wall of the BaseBall Club with Tony and Gil to give a sense of scale.
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Installing a 4 x 6 foot mosaic panel 50 feet in the air on a cold and windy Chicago day is no real picnic!

I'm not sure how much this piece weighs, but I'd guess that it's around 250 pounds. No matter how heavy a piece like this is, it will act like a sail when you have a stiff Chicago wind. We were lucky enough to have the railing right above where we wanted to hang it, so we used ropes to haul it up and tied it off. Then I climbed to the top of the best ladder on site and basically used the wind to hold me in place while I held the mosaic in place and reached to the limits of my ability to drill the first two holes for the concrete anchors. It's hard to drill over your head to begin with, but try it with a 24V hammer drill! Yikes.

Fortunately, everything went pretty well and we were able to install the mosaic without injury to art or person. The installation was done on my way back from SXSW and since these things always take longer than expected, I had to hit the road before the two smaller panels were hung. Next time I'm in Chicago, I'll try to swing by and get a photo of the entire set in place.

 

Tinker to Evers to Chance: A Tribute to the Chicago Cubs

The image above shows the completed triptych. View a larger image of the Joe Tinker Mosaic here. View a larger image of the Frank Chance Mosaic here. The images below show the baseball cards that the mosaics were based on (circa 1910-11 found at the Library of Congress' Special Collections website). They all shared the orange sky, but since the project was done in stages over a period of a few years, I thought I would give the smaller ones blue skies to avoid confusing people. On the final piece I went with the orange, which I really like. The contrast between the blue and orange works really well, I think.

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Eagle Dance, A sculpture named for it's shadow

 

Here's another sculpture created from scraps left over from the firebowls. Check out the shadow that it casts… it reminds me of someone dancing with a bird wing costume, hence the name of the sculpture.

This piece is what got me started working with the scrap bits this week. I'd gotten an email from a woman who is building a concrete fire pit for her patio and wondered if I could create a sculpture to sit within the firepit and interact with the flames. Cool idea. It had kind of occurred to me to make sculptures for fire pits last summer, but with the Great Bowl O Fire, it seemed kind of busy. Hadn't occurred to me to make sculptures to go in other firepit designs (duh…). So I'm playing with the idea a bit right now. It's not like steel would get damaged by flames, so it's just a matter of designing sculptures that can draw the flames through openings, or perhaps have thinner bits that will heat up and glow. Well, and there's the matter of coming up with a base for the sculptures that won't interfere with gas burners.

Anyway, it's a cool idea. I'm running with it. This was the first stab at a firepit sculpture.

 

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Scrap Metal Architectural Panels

Here's another project done this week with left-over cut outs from the Fire Bowls. As cool as these shapes are, they can be kind of hard to work with… I find that when they're layered over one another in a pile, they look awesome, but usually when I try to work with them individually, they lose something in the process. So I took an old steel frame from a trampoline, welded in a bunch of flat pieces of steel to provide a backdrop and then filled it up with several layers of welded in firebowl scraps. And voila! It looks as good as it does when they're randomly scattered!

I love the texture and the play of shadow in between the bits of steel. The colors are nice too, though over time those will change to a more consistent tone if the piece is left outdoors.

At which point you're maybe thinking, "Great John, but what's it good for?"

Glad you asked.

I like the idea of this as a wall hanging piece, but it weighs about 150 pounds or more so that rules out a lot of walls… If you've got a nice modern loft space with concrete walls, I reckon you could get away with it. Which makes me think that a few of these would look totally amazing if they were bolted to or set into a concrete wall as an architectural feature. Yeah, I think I may do just that when I get around to landscaping here at the studio… Some nice cast concrete walls with inset steel panels. Actually, they'd look even better if the were set into a wall as part of a fountain or water feature. Yeah, imagine if water were seeping through the spaces between the metal and falling into a trough.

I think they'd also work well as components in a fence, especially if you were thinking about a fence that provides more privacy by blocking the view from outside. If I were gonna make a fence in this style, I'd probably do a bunch of panels in different sizes and connect them together like the panels in the first big scrap metal fence project I did.

My ultimate goal is to do a pair of 4 x 8 foot doors in this style when I build the new studio building. I'll probably have to get the hinges and frames from a bank vault company, but still…

As usual, if any of these projects sound like what you're looking for, or you'd like to talk about commissioning a project along these lines, drop me an email or call 231.584.2710.

Recycled Steel Tree for Earth Day

 

Okay, actually, since recycled steel art is still the main gig here at the studio, it's really kind of Earth Day all the time. On the other hand, a tree made of 100% recycled steel seems like just the thing to post in observance of the day. And hey, it's brand new too!

I've been playing around with the scrap pieces cut out from the Great Bowl O Fire this week and I think this tree is probably my favorite of the results so far… It's kind of a revisitation of the bottle trees I did last year, but this time with scrap steel leaves. The most remarkable thing about it is that, from a distance, it's very hard to tell that it isn't a real tree! The coloration of the rusty metal, and the shapes of the pieces, make it look an awful lot like an oak shrub.

I'm really curious to see how many people actually notice it as a sculpture when they pull into the studio parking lot this summer… I know that for the last couple days, I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye and wondering for just a split second, "hey, where'd that tree come from!?!"

It's a little tricky to get a good photo that really shows it off (at least until spring really hits and I can plant it in the grass) so I've included a bunch of alternate views below. Definitely check out the lower left picture that shows how real it looks from far away.

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WhippleWorld: as Warm and Open as a Texas Plain

When I mentioned on the blog that I would be in Austin, John Whipple sent me an email saying:

Whippleworld is only about an hour from Austin so maybe we could drive up there and see you.

I was totally geeked!

Jimmie Whipple was the very first customer at my ArtBuzz blog and I've stayed in touch with the family ever since… They're very cool folks, which comes through clearly on their blog. The chance to get to meet them in person was really every bit as exciting as the idea of meeting any of the panelists at SXSW.

I'm bad at geography, so I'd had no idea they were that close to Austin. I wrote John back and asked if he had any suggestions for a cheap motel outside Austin (I hadn't made reservations when I bought the SXSW ticket and there was pretty much nothing available in town). He offered me the use of their little Casita trailer that sits on the site of their homebrew music fest, the Woodzie. Here's the trailer:

There's a bunch more pictures at the the Woodzie blog that give you an idea of how beautiful the location is.

The Casita was a totally cosy little place to stay… And actually, there was something just perfect about spending the days at SXSW immersed in tech and and noise and business, then coming home to a quiet little place in the woods. If I'd been staying in Austin, I'm sure I'd have had a blast and partied harder, slept less, and well, generally run myself into the ground. It's a funny thing, because I don't really care for the isolation and quiet in the woods where I actually live, but while staying at the Casita I pretty much came home, turned on KNBT and relaxed for the night.

My first night there, John and Jimmie and I got a chance to hang out and drink some of the 90 beers that Tony Racky had given me for the road when I dropped off the last panel of the Baseball Triptych for LakeView Baseball Club (story to come). We had a great time talking and later in the week went out for all-you-can-eat BBQ and a great open mic in a nearby bar. John sang some of his songs (And yes, John, I was serious… I really want a recording of the one about dustdevil love) which were beautiful.

It's way cool when you get to meet people that you've known from afar in person and they're even cooler than you had imagined. I sent out a gift when I got home that should come in handy on Woodzie Weekend.

I'm really looking forward to another visit!

A little bit of color in a world like a blank page

We finally got rid of all our snow, and then, suddenly, it's back with a vengeance. I want spring, now!

But at least the bottle tree in the yard looks pretty. It's the only color in the whole neighborhood today.

I Kinda Wanna be a Texan

So, it's been almost a month since I headed out the door to go to SXSW, and I still haven't had a chance to say anything about the trip. Partly because all the geeks with laptops pretty much brought Austin's citywide free wifi down and I could barely get online while I was there to check my mail, and partly because I've been just flooded with work ever since I got back. Excuses, excuses, eh?

First off, I totally fell in love with Austin. Great food, great music, amazing bars (I hate drinking in bars but I would do it all the time if they were as cool as the bars in Austin), the older buildings in Austin are gorgeous and so are a lot of the newer ones. I saw cool art in galleries, totally love the idea of municipal wireless, and all the people I met were very cool.

Texas appealed to me in the broader sense as well, which came as a bit of a surprise…

Texas has free wifi in the rest areas by the highway! I couldn't get it to work, but still, that's enlightened civilization as far as I go. There are very intriguing junkyards in Texas that had me itching to stop and poke around… and it seemed like every 20 miles or so there was a lot full of killer antique cars and trucks for sale.

I stopped in to talk to a guy who reconditions ancient gas pumps and gas station signs. The yard was full of rusting out old glass top "percolator style" pumps which had a gorgeous patina, but then when I stepped inside and saw the gleaming reconditioned pumps I felt like I was in an industrial design museum. I asked him if he sold them online at all and he told me that he had given it a go, but typically by the time he got them photographed and uploaded someone had pulled in off the road and bought 'em. Which made me think that I could probably do okay selling fire bowls by the Texas Road side. That, and there is a compulsion to erect large steel ranch gates at the end of every drive way… I could happily weld up some killer grandiose ranch gates.

Since Texas has this thing for being larger than life, in a way I can kinda see fitting right in there.

And it finally occurred to me that it's got to be cheaper both financially and environmentally to cool a building for three months than it is to heat it for six (or more).

There were shipping containers stacked up everywhere. I still want to build a big steel Lego building out of those.

Overall, it was an amazing trip.

A Custom Brazier for The Episcopal Church of the Resurrection

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The brazier above is a great example of how a commissioned piece can turn out. This photo is not the piece I did for the client, but a second one I did in the same style. I've thought about doing a wave motif on the firebowls or braziers, so I was pleased when I got a request for one.

The design was commissioned by Rev. J. Brian Ponder, chaplain and assistant rector, The Episcopal Canterbury Fellowship at Mississippi State University. He wrote to ask if I could customize the design of my Blaze O Glory Brazier for use in the Fellowship's Easter Vigil this year at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection. Rev. Ponder was kind enough to allow me to quote a few of his emails as an example of the collaboration between artist and client. In his initial inquiry, he said:

John: I was wondering what turn-around time and cost might be on a Blaze O Glory Brazier that incorporated not only flames but also (crashing/rolling) waves of water. We're considering some kind of brazier or container to kindle a paschal fire for the Easter Vigil at our church.

I gave him a call to bounce some ideas back and forth about the design and what he had in mind. Over the phone, we decided that rather than trying to combine flame and water patterns in the design of the brazier, it would be a stronger image to allow the real flames inside the brazier to show through the wave motif cut into the steel. We had a really enjoyable conversation about how the brazier would be used, what stories would play a part in the liturgy, and so forth, so that I had a very clear idea of what effect he wanted to achieve.

When I shipped the brazier, I included an extra section of pipe for the stand so that it could be configured as higher or lower depending on how it would be carried through the church. I emailed Brian to let him know it was on the way and provided some instructions on how they might acheive different finishes on the metal if desired. He wrote back to say:

We're really looking forward to receiving the brazier! I'm pleased by your excitement over this piece -- it shows through in your email. We're very excited about having this piece of your work at Resurrection!

Thank you very much for the information about the brazier, its upkeep and the flexibility in stand size. Our plans are to either kindle the fire on the parish's Labyrinth or at the Columbarium. I think either would make great symbols for Easter (either that of journey/pilgrimage, or of life from death).

I love having the opportunity to do work which carries a deeper meaning for people than just decorative or functional work. I wish I could be there this weekend to see the service, but Brian has promised to send some photos which I will definitely post here when I get them. I got a really great email from him a couple weeks after the brazier arrived which read:

I wanted to touch base with you to let you know that the water-imagery brazier is perfect! It arrived safely about two weeks ago, and we're looking forward to using it at the Great Vigil of Easter. Mixing the kindling of the Paschal fire with the images of water that make up the stories of the evening's liturgy will be a powerful symbol.

Thanks so much for your work in getting this to us so quickly. It's wonderful! We really like the way it has turned out. Bravo!

Happy Easter, Brian! Thanks for the opportunity to come up with a cool new design!

 

Recent Interviews

Liz Hinks at Great Green Goods just posted her first podcast, a rambling conversation we had on the topic of making art from recycled materials, how I got my start in art and various other topics. Really, she described it better: “John T. Unger, the creator of the famous ”Great Bowl O Fire“ talks about how working with recycled materials has brought him love, fame and happiness!!”

It was a blast getting a chance to chat with Liz, who is one of my favorite bloggers and a long time friend.

I also have a couple brief cameo appearances in an interview with Hugh MacLeod on Tony Piece's LAist blog shot at SXSWi. It's pretty much a smile and wave sort of thing, but we had a great time hanging out drinking Makers and if I owned a scanner, I'd post a picture of the cartoon Hugh drew for me. Man, I've wanted my own gapingvoid cartoon since about when I started blogging.

Ben, over at the MoneySmartLife blog interviewed me way back in February. I should have posted the links then, but it's been crazy busy for months. Ben asked some really great questions and is looking for other entrepreneurs who would like to speak about their experience.

The interview is divided into three parts:

1. Entrepreneur Extraordinaire. Learn from this Artist, Designer, and Catablogger.
2. Entrepreneurial Journey, Motivation, & Enthusiasm.
3. Catablogging & Health Care Coverage

It's fun to get a chance to answer other people's questions and refine some of my ideas.