John D. Egner and the CMU IET building's tiled floors

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Recently a manuscript collection of artist John D. Egner (1940-2021) was transferred to the Clarke from Wayne State University's (WSU) Art Collection. Egner was a leading light of the Detroit art scene beginning in the 1960s and a member of WSU teaching faculty. Many of his artworks are in WSU's Art Collection. His papers document how he won a Michigan Commission on Art in Public Places competition in 1987 with his Artist’s Statement to design a tile floor for Central Michigan University’s new Industrial Education and Technology (IET) Building. His intention was to design the tile floors to resemble large "Oriental rugs". The floors would be subtle and not detract from the rest of the building's structure. The manuscript collection documents the entire process of Egner winning the competition, creating the design templates for various floor patterns, the laborious installation of the tiles according to the design templates, and, finally, the building’s dedication. 

First, Egner conceptualized and drew multiple floor design templates or patterns. Then he colored them in various ways. He decided which designs and colors he wanted. Next,  he had tile marquettes, or examples of the tiles, manufactured to see how they looked before actual tiles were created, how they looked next to each other, and which would fit best in different sized bays or halls. You can see examples of these above. He used architectural records and a 3-d building model to determine this. Then a specific number of tiles were created and related supplies purchased.

The tiling crew found the cement floors required a lot of fixing before they could be tiled. Then a massive tiling project began, which is well documented in the collection. Egner's contract stipulated that the work had to be completed by late 1988 so the building could be officially ready for use by January 1989. The IET building was built by Daverman and Associates of Grand Rapids. The building was in use, but not completed by the deadline. Here are just a few of the many images of the tiling process and partially completed floors.




The building was officially dedicated in October 1989. An image of the tiled floors was featured on the dedication program's cover. The tiles also influenced the choice of the program's background design, which is unusual among CMU building dedication programs, as seen below. Also unique among program covers is this one's silvery, reflective nature, giving the viewer an almost 3-d effect.



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