About John T. Unger

I'm currently best know as an artist and designer, but I also get a fair amount of press for business, marketing, technology and more. Relaxing makes me tense, so I tend to put in a lot of hours on diverse projects.

On the way to a successful art career I've been a poet and writer, a tech geek, a print and web designer, illustrator, industrial designer, musician, teacher, actor, set designer and even a paid guru once.

It's all the same thing in the end— I wake up most days thinking about how I want to change, fix or improve some aspect of the world. And after a couple cups of coffee I get started on it. My speciality is impossibility remediation: if it can't be done, I'm on it.

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. 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.

About the Art:

My creative mandate is "sustainable design with an edge." Just because we're good doesn't mean we have to be boring, right? I think there's a place for rock n' roll to dance with environmental responsibility in a house shakin' way. If green products are to compete in the market, they need to be sexy, sleek and chic— cooler than new.

Surprise and beauty are a good start, but I expect more and so should you. As an artist and designer, I am intensely committed to sustainable design practices and materials in the following ways:

I work primarily with recycled or re-used materials. This is the best way I know to minimize my impact on natural resources, climate and the environment. In addition, I feel that creative re-use has the potential to spark new ways of looking at the world… if one thing can be turned into another, what else can we change? Successful recycled art and design encourages creativity in others— it's alchemical, magical, subversive, and transformative by nature. I feel that only be a good thing.

I design for permanence. Most of my objects will last generations with little or no maintenance. I try to create objects that will never go out of style by drawing from primal metaphor and classical elements of design that speak to what it means to be human and alive.

I design for functionality. My work is intended to be useful as well as beautiful. I enjoy the practical aspect of art and feel that engineering is as critical as ingenuity in the creation of solid works of art. Where possible, I design for easy disassembly for shipping or later re-use of materials.