Elegy in Neon

A liquor store in Ridgewood, Queens, declined Con Edison’s suggestion to replace neon with LED lights
The photographers James and Karla Murray
have taken it as their personal mission to
document those beloved
places that give the city its character before they fade away.
In 2008,
they published the book “Store Front,”
a tombstone-size elegy to a disappearing
New York of Optimo cigar
shops, Lower East Side brassiere wholesalers and kosher dairy joints.

Light fantastic: Photographer catalogs the glowing neon signs illuminating store fronts across New York City

New York: Photographer catalogs the glowing neon signs illuminating store fronts across city | Mail Online

The
neon lights of New York are the subject of a collection of photographs

showing off the glowing marquees in the city that never sleeps.

Photographers
James and Karla Murray captured the signs illuminating

establishments
across the city and compiled the snapshots in their

book 'New York
Nights' published in December 2012.

The
book is organized into seven sections that highlights sings in

Manhattan below 14th Street, 14th Street to 34th Street, 34th Street to

59th Street, above 59th Street and then The Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn.

DispL.A. Case #27: L.A.'s First Neon Sign

Neon would become synonymous
with Los Angeles and in the following decades our streets
would become
an electric dance of art and advertising that continues to this day. We
even have
a museum devoted to neon art. Those original signs are long gone, but when the building
was remade into the “Packard Lofts” in 2006 the owners decided to pay homage with a replica
sign that once again lights up that corner of the city.

Famous Baxter Hotel neon sign re-lit in Bozeman

BOZEMAN - You can't live in Bozeman without seeing the iconic Baxter
Hotel,
and its trademark neon sign. A re-lighting ceremony was held
Thursday night on Main Street.

City officials and Sen. Max Baucus
were on hand for the celebration as the 40-year
dormant sign graced the
Bozeman skyline once again.

"It definitely will reset the
Bozeman skyline and we're thinking that you'll be able to see it
when
you're flying into town, or from quite far away," Amy McDonald, Baxter
Hotel General Manager, said.

Most of the sign is original with only the paint and the neon itself needing to be replaced during refurbishment.

Sign smashes into Highland Park law

Neon sign at Billy Corgan's Highland Park tea shop catches city's eye - chicagotribune.com

The neon signage, measuring 13 feet from side to side,
was designed by
the Smashing Pumpkins frontman himself after a font created by
legendary
designer Yves Saint Laurent, according to a city memo. It's roughly
five times
larger than the local zoning ordinance permits.
(Handout, / January 14, 2013)

Bogan Botox

neon as art

neon art Archives - Angel Orensanz Foundation

Neon lights have lit signs for countless of years now, but looking at
them you

wouldn’t expect them to be considered art. They are just
lights that shout “open” into

a dark street or something similar. To
most that really isn’t anything special.

Olivia Steele would beg to differ.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee the conceptual neon artist has made a
career out of

taking the bright lights and using them to spell out
idioms and statements from her

childhood. As she says, she grew up in a
home where her “Father had a statement

or idiom for everything. There
was an answer for everything with a quote” and it was

through these
statements that Steele “found a solution and an answer to the ins and
outs of life.”

Art Basel In Miami Gets Us Thinking: Is It Art?

Art Basel In Miami Gets Us Thinking: Is It Art? | WLRN

There is no easy way to define "art." Any attempt at simplification
risks making the writer sound uninformed at best. There are countless
experts and publications who have created an industry debating what is
true art, though the discourse these days seems to center more on
economic rather than artistic value.

Perhaps as a backlash, I've
heard buzz during Art Basel about another question: "What is not art?"
What exactly falls into that category? Is it the piece in the hallowed
Miami Beach Convention Center that is essentially two empty coat racks?
The neon bench? How about a performance by an artist who "pops up,"
randomly screaming in public places? Or my favorite, the live tiger in a
cage in the middle of the Hotel Victor's nightclub? Yes, live tiger.

As
you navigate some of the murkier waters of the 20-plus fairs around
town, I suggest you play this party game with your friends: Is It Art?

Enlarge image

Credit Florencia Jimenez-Marcos

Two Coat Racks: Some were puzzled by this Art Basel exhibit at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

As
far as I'm concerned, at least for one spectacular week when Art Basel
is in Miami,

the answer is always YES. Part of that comes from the
nature of art itself,

but I like to think there is also the influence of
our Magic City. Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

We may
have beer (or in this case, champagne) goggles, but we find beauty and
art everywhere.

They city has opened its arms and embraces Art in all
its forms.

Now, if only the bouncers working the velvet ropes at the parties were so welcoming.

What's the most outrageous thing you've seen that is – or isn't – art?

--Florencia Jimenez-Marcos is an art enthusiast who lives in Miami

‘The Wake’: a Neon Art Installation Interpretation of James Joyce

One of Ireland’s Best Writers, Now in Neon: ‘The Wake’ Art Exhibit | The Crosby Press – BETA

Gaudy neon creations tell the story of Las Vegas

Gaudy neon creations tell the story of Las Vegas|Arts and Styles|chinadaily.com.cn
Justin Favela of the Neon Museum, with more than 150 signs from defunct Las Vegas hotels and casinos. Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

LAS VEGAS - At a gala event before the opening of the open-air Neon Museum here,
Brian Leming, a retired neon sign designer, stood surrounded by 150 hunks of metal and glowing glass.
The museum, which opened last month after 15 years of effort, and its signs,
dating from the 1930s to the '90s and arranged along a mazelike path, are increasingly
seen as expressions of history, art and architecture, worth preserving.
Mr. Leming, 72, recalled a design meeting for the Stardust Hotel-Casino, then run by
Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, a Las Vegas bookmaker and kingpin.
"We were sitting around a conference table and arguing about the right shade of purple," Mr. Leming recalled.
"And I'm thinking, Jesus, they're discussing the nuances of purple, and this is Frank Rosenthal!"
Mr. Leming is a craftsman from a bygone era, when people heated and bent glass tubes,
filled them with neon and argon gas, cut and shaped metal and fiberglass, and then hoisted them onto buildings and above roads.
The museum had drawn 20,000 visitors a year by appointment only, plus photo and film shoots,
even before it officially opened.
Bill Marion, chairman of the museum's board, said the museum would get people to realize
Las Vegas has made a significant cultural impact worldwide.
Mr. Leming had tried for 20 years to gain support for preserving the signs as many
Las Vegas properties were demolished. "'If you're going to knock it down, let's save it,' I would tell them," Mr. Leming said.

For years the signs sat in a dusty lot. Then in 2005 a quirky building with a roof shaped
like a seashell, from La Concha Motel, was donated to the museum. The 1960s lobby,
designed by Paul Revere Williams, would become the museum's visitor center.
Cutting the building into eight pieces, moving them six kilometers north and reassembling
them cost $1.2 million. Adding offices, restrooms and an outdoor deck cost another $1.6 million.
When a place receives as many visitors as the Las Vegas Strip - 41.5 million passengers
passed through McCarran International Airport last year - that can add up to a lot of stories.
Mr. Marion recalled a Venezuelan brother and sister in their 30s who teared up in front of the
Stardust sign. Their parents had gotten married at the hotel but had never been back;
the siblings grew up seeing the photo of the newlyweds on the wall.
On a recent tour, Justin Favela, the programs coordinator, paused at a giant H.
"This came from the Horseshoe casino, owned by Benny Binion, who may or may not have killed someone,"
he said. "When I gave the tour to Binion's son, Jack, he said, 'You don't have to sugarcoat it.'"
Danielle Kelly, the museum's executive director, said the value of the signs went beyond personal memories,
showing a "design that has happened here could only have happened here."
Several fonts were created and became widely used, including Atomic Age letters from the early signs of the
Stardust, which was demolished in 2007. "All this was developed in a so-called cultural wasteland," she said.

Mel Shields: Neon exhibition lights up Reno again

Mel Shields: Neon exhibition lights up Reno again - Reno/Tahoe Travel - The Sacramento Bee

Two cowboys stand next to each other, their arms crossed, their
legs spread,
and their brightly colored neon chaps overlapping, the
right leg of one merging with the left leg of the other.
They were familiar sights, these neon cowboys, to anyone who visited the
Mapes Hotel-Casino in downtown Reno before its 2000 implosion.

After it opened in 1946, the Mapes was for a long time the biggest,
most modern hotel in the city.
It featured top entertainers in its Sky
Room and became the select place to stay for celebrities,
including Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe when they filmed "The Misfits."




The shine didn't last. When the Mapes closed in 1982, it was so out
of date,
the elevators still were human-operated. Still, there's plenty
of nostalgia for the old place,
as well as for other Reno landmarks that
became regular stops for tourists.
Those memories are the main
attraction of "The Light Circus: Art of Nevada Neon"
at the Nevada
Museum of Art through Feb. 10.
Reno collector Will Durham has
worked for the past decade to build the collection.
He and the museum
joined forces to restore, rewire and relight the pieces that truly

represent Reno's and the rest of Nevada's appeal through the mid-part of
the 20th century.
Neon was essential. Most of the best-known
images are gone now, but the exhibition
includes yet another cowboy,
this one in the shape of the state itself, cowboy hat worn
tilted on the
side, hand raised in greeting, and chaps ablaze; he stood over the
entrance
to the Nevada Club, now incorporated into Harrah's Reno. There
are images from Harolds Club,
also now incorporated into Harrah's, and
signs from other businesses, most notably
Parker's Western Wear, a
destination in and of itself. (160 W. Liberty St., Reno; 10 a.m. to 5
p.m.
Wednesdays through Sundays, until 8 p.m. Thursdays; $10, $8 senior/
student, $1 children 6-12; 775-329-3333 or nevadaart.org).

Neon art from one of Britain’s brightest talents

Neon art from one of Britain’s brightest talents - Art - How To Spend It
Kitsch cool: brilliant, bold and beautiful creations to light up lives

This month, his Circus of Soho pop-up shop opens on Beak Street
(from
November 20 to January 15), where a selection of illuminated artworks

will go on display. “Neon has a soul – it lives at night, creating
poetry with light,”
he says, whether it “promises love in Soho or hot
bagels”. His work, in short, is always brilliant.

Neon Art That Speaks to the Heart

More at
Neon Art That Speaks to the Heart - My Modern Metropolis


For anyone who's ever experienced the highs and lows of being in love,
you'll appreciate these
neon sculptures by Olivia Steele. The London and
Berlin-based artist creates intimate statements
that evoke an emotional
response. For last year's Frieze Art Fair, she placed her neon signs in
public
spaces all around London in an exhibition she appropriately
called Public Displays of Affection.
As she writes on her website, "From
an East London lingerie shop to a historical religious landmark,
over
the Mile End foot bridge and above ordinarily dingy public toilets, her
artworks have become
beacons spanning the city – a yellow brick road of
illuminating lyrical sculpture."

Tracey Emin’s Neon Confessions – Creative Inspiration

Tracey Emin’s Neon Confessions – Creative Inspiration | Write In Color

What happens when you combine your most intimate thoughts with neon?
Magic.

Tracey Emin, a provocative British artist, uses neon to shed
light (quite literally)

on what it feels like to love and live
passionately. Using neon to mimic her own

handwriting, Emin infuses her
thoughts of love and lust and hope and desire

with color. What we at
Write In Color love about her art is that she is bold

enough to put her
must vulnerable musings out there for all of us to read.

There’s no
symbolism. Her art just is what it is.

And what it is, is glorious.

Some of my favorite lines from her neon art pieces include, “I listen
to the ocean and all I hear is you,”

“You should have loved ME,” and
“With you I want to live.”

For more got to

Tracey Emin’s Neon Confessions – Creative Inspiration | Write In Color

The world’s largest museum of neon signage formally opens Saturday in Las Vegas.

Vintage Vegas neon signs light up Sin City museum - Itineraries on NBCNews.com

The brightly-colored, flashing lights of neon signs and the city of
Las Vegas go together

like gin and tonic water, so it’s no surprise that
Sin City is the site of

the Neon Museum, which its founders say is the world’s largest museum of neon signage.

On
Saturday, when the museum opens its doors, visitors will be able to
view a collection

of more than 150 neon signs - some vintage dating back
to the 1930s, others more recent.

But
all the signs are an important part of the social, architectural,
design and pop-culture

history of Las Vegas, said Danielle Kelly, the
museum’s executive director.

“Everyone
knows the Stardust, which is highly recognized by so many people all
over the

world,” Kelly said. The museum has three different versions of
signs from the iconic

Stardust Hotel-Casino, which was demolished in
2007 after an almost half-century run.

During its heyday, the resort was
considered the ultimate in luxury and style.

Other signs are from lesser-celebrated properties, like the one from the

Algiers Hotel - once “the place
for a power breakfast,” for locals, Kelly said.

Other signs are from
the Moulin Rouge, the Desert Inn, the Flamingo and

other bygone hotels,
restaurants, casinos and businesses.

The museum features a two-acre outdoor space known as the Neon Boneyard,

and a
visitor center housed inside the former La Concha Motel lobby, a
distinctive

modern shell-shaped building from the early 1960s.

The
initial effort to collect the signs began in the 1980s when a local
arts group recognized

their historic and artistic value, as many signs
were being destroyed when buildings

were torn down, Kelly said. In 1996,
the formal collection began with a handful of rescued signs.

For more go to

Vintage Vegas neon signs light up Sin City museum - Itineraries on NBCNews.com