contact: John Unger
Web site: www.popvernacular.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Local Mosaic and Ironwork Artist Offers Services to Northern Michigan Homes and Businesses

Northern Michigan homeowners and builders looking to add unique touches to their homes and developments should consider mosaic and ironwork artist John Unger.

Working with Italian glass, ceramic, marble, steel, copper, bronze and concrete, Unger's custom ironwork and mosaics have been used indoors and outdoors: for floors, murals, furniture, fences, gates, railings and sculpture. His commissions have included public art as well as private clients.

"Ironwork lends itself to musicality," Unger says, "not only in the game of running a stick along a fence to hear each length or thickness sound their individual voices, but in the visual interplay of rhythm and melody.

"Using the same staggered accents and off-beat phrasing that breath wild and lively through jazz, I create each gate or fence as a score for the dance of the eye."

Unger, 35, a native of Torch Lake/Bellaire, Mich., is a largely self-taught artist who recently returned to the area after three years in Chicago, where he was a graphic designer and illustrator and worked in mosaic, ironwork and "guerrilla sculpture installation."

As a design solution, ironwork and mosaic offer many benefits. Both create strong identity components for single

or multi-site developments. Both offer a durable, low maintenance and cost-effective means of integrating the client's vision into the structure of a project.

While the actual process of making a mosaic hasn't changed

much since Ancient Rome, Unger has invigorated it by incorporating surprise elements, such as making an eye from a large Xerox copier lens backed with a photo of an eye, or using bottle caps for the tail of a mermaid sculpture whose upper torso is vitreous glass.

In his smaller pieces, he use often uses an image behind shattered safety glass to achieve a bright stained glass effect with much more detail that one could ordinarily achieve by making the image of tile or stone.

Unger has exhibited work in galleries and museums in Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, Houston, Portland and Port au Prince, Haiti. His work has been commissioned by Northeastern University, Boston; the Tarble Arts Center of Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL; Caffe Baci, Cafe Jumping Bean, Lakeview Baseball Club, and Manly Career Academy High School in Chicago.

He has worked on a number of large-scale projects for other studios, including the 1,800 square-foot mosaic on the face of the Chicago DisneyQuest building, as well as mosaics for Nine Restaurant in Chicago; and Bistro Banlieue in Lombard, IL.

For examples of Unger's work, visit his Web site: www.popvernacular.com