John T. Unger

About John T. Unger:

I like to joke that I'm the world's most well-educated self-taught artist — I've learned pretty much everything I know by doing it. The best way to get my attention is to tell me that something "can't be done." I'm a bit of a specialist in the field of impossibility remediation. I work in a lot of different styles using a wide variety of materials. I find that each new medium informs all which have come before… music influences my sculpture, poetry was the root of my early mixed media work, etc.

I've been making art professionally for a over a decade, and have made a full-time living as an artist ever since the dot-com crash put the kibosh on financing my art habit through freelance graphic design. I decided the art would have to support itself, me and the cat and it's worked out pretty darn well. In some ways, the best thing that ever happened to me was when the bubble burst.

Before that, I worked as a print and web designer, illustrator, industrial designer, musician, teacher, actor, and set designer. I began my arts career as a poet and writer, performing in venues as intimate as Stone Circle and as large as the Reverend Mudd Poetry Tent at Lollapalooza. Although poetry was a rotten way to pay the bills, it was a great way to live. It turns out that the chops I developed as a writer come in really handy now that I use blogs as the main venue for selling my work.

My work has been featured in books such as Mosaic Art and Style: Designs for Living Environments, by JoAnn Locktov, The Artful Home, and Sextablos: Works on Metal. Magazines and newspapers which have featured my work include: Wave Magazine, Variety, Bizarre Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Northern Home Magazine, Northeastern University Magazine, The Cream City Review, New City, and The Chicago Reader.

Museums and galleries have included my sculpture and installations in national and international exhibitions. Significant collections and commissions include public art mosaic murals for Manley Career Academy High School, Chicago; Alden State Bank, Lakeview Baseball Club, Northeastern University, Designhaus Pllc, Architects, and The Cleveland Clinic Foundation and private residences. For details, please refer to my curriculum