Pewabic Tile Mural - Compuware Building - Detroit, Michigan - Murals on Waymarking.com

The mural is 5ft x 65ft and lines a long narrow hallway.

An Article in the Eastern Michigan University Focus www.emich.edu/focus_emu/pdf/focusemu021004.pdf

tells us this of the arist and the mural:

"The work was physical and exhausting, but the product is quiet and historic. Diana Pancioli, EMU professor of art, has created a ceramic mural at Detroit’s Compuware World Headquarters. The wall’s ivy green Pewabic tiles provide pedestrians with a sense of quiet as they walk hrough the heavily traveled, first-floor hall connecting Compuware with visitor parking. “It’s a homage to Mary (Chase Perry Stratton),” said Pancioli, about the arts patron in Detroit who founded Pewabic Pottery in 1903. Pewabic tiles became nationally recognized for the unique glazes used for architectural commissions.

Titled “Passage,” the wall, dedicated Nov. 21, 2003, is made up of more than 1,000 Pewabic tiles created years ago by the hometown
industry.

“It’s in the right location,” said Pancioli, who suggested an historic element be added to the new 12-story headquarters. The immense 5-foot-high and 65-foot expanse creates a feeling of quietness, she said.

Its mood is transmitted through the interplay of reflected light on the mat surface of each individual tile that varies in size and thickness, she said. The dark grouting also lends itself to the overall mood. The project took three weeks for her and two students
to design. They physically laid out each tile on pieces of plywood laid in the courtyard of Sill Hall. They then boxed each segment of the wall and numbered it. For another six weeks, Pancioli and two professional, third-generation tile installers assembled the mural at
Compuware headquarters, Pancioli said. Art can’t be made by guesswork or drawings,” she said. “You have to see it. Visual decisions must be made visually.”

The tiles in the mural are part of the commercial and cultural heritage of Detroit. In 1912, the Stroh Brewery Co. commissioned Pewabic Pottery to make tiles for the Stroh brew house. Pewabic Pottery produced identical tiles in 1956 for an addition to the brewery, but all of the tiles were not used. Since then, the remaining tiles have been used in several public installations in Detroit, including the walls of the Cadillac Center People Mover Station, which is adjacent to the Compuware building. “Every five years, I do a wall,” said Pancioli, who also created a mural for the Barbara Ann Karmanos Breast Cancer Center at Wayne State University’s medical school and a mural, using ceramic tile of her own design and Pewabic tiles, at Detroit Receiving Hospital. Pancioli also is writing a cookbook and traveling throughout the world, gathering images of pots and sculpture for a book on ceramic history from 3000 B.C. to 1750 AD.

Pancioli has been teaching at EMU since 1991. She earned her bachelor of fine arts degree from Wayne State University and a master of fine arts degree from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University"

City: Detroit Location Name: Compuware Building Artist: Diana Pancioli Date: November 21, 2003 Media: Tile Relevant Web Site: [Web Link]

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