Lights Burning Bright It’s A Difficult Craft, But Ken Yuhasz Loves The Color, Brightness And Challenge Of Creating Vibrant Neon Signs
Finding Ken Yuhasz’s house is easy - just look for the glowing bright red neon address numbers.
The house on Fairview in northwest Spokane is home for the artist who bends and coaxes slender glass tubes into waving, snaking squiggles.
Filled with neon or argon gasses and infused with electricity, they blaze with unearthly vibrancy.
“The brightness is the attraction,” says Yuhasz.
His art is on display through March 16 at the Cheney Cowles Museum as part of the Northwest Neon exhibit.
But his work can also be seen adorning businesses around Spokane, including, Street Music on Howard Street, The Frame Shop on Garland, and Milford’s Fish House on North Monroe. The Milford’s sign is among his favorites.
“They have this pristine building and wanted a vintage sign from the 1930s, not one of those plastic signs backlit with florescent lights,” said Yuhasz.
It’s a shared respect.
“He knew what I was talking about, what I wanted, and he hit it pretty good,” said Milford’s owner Jerry Young. “There is a real style there, it’s not just a random thing.”
The Milford’s sign blends gently with the 1925 building.
Yuhasz’s museum displays, on the other hand, scream for attention.
The front of a Volkswagen bus, painted with flowers and peace symbols, bursts through a wall. Rainbow-hued shocks of wavy neon hair spew from the driver’s head. “Self-Portrait,” it’s called.
“I wanted to do something that would embody the ‘60s,” says Yuhasz.
“I found the front of the bus through the classifieds, parked in a funky garage. I think it sums up the ‘60s.”
He sawed and welded and reassembled the front end. His wife, Patt Earley, painted the flowers and flower-child slogans, cranking up Janis Joplin tunes for inspiration.
Another display might be described as “June Cleaver Gone Bad.” A tipsy housewife in a gold metallic apron vacuums neon snakes from the floor with a 1920s Hoover.
She’s surrounded by a surreal luminescent chair and radio. Yuhasz calls the piece “Neon Environment.”
Each item in the display inspired the others. The chair needed a room; the oddly posed mannequin begged for a champagne glass; the floor led to the vacuum. A friend’s statue of David sacrificed the apron.
Yuhasz, 47, didn’t grow up with artistic inclinations. He has no formal art training, but a background in graphic design and sign-making.
A broken neon sign he was repainting inspired him to learn more about the bright lights. Fascinated, he studied at the Neon Art and Tube Bending School in Portland to learn how to bend glass.
He opened a neon sign shop in Moscow, Idaho, in 1989, then moved to Spokane in 1991.
“I like to make signs - I really like to make neon signs,” he says. “The signs afforded me the opportunity to create art, it was an opportunity I never had before. Suddenly I had a medium I could deal with.”
Growing up in Los Angeles, attending Catholic schools, dressing each day in a gray salt-and-pepper corduroy uniform might have something to do with the neon passion.
“I love the color, the brightness,” he says.
But the challenge of creating the bright light is also alluring.
“It’s a difficult craft, and that is appealing,” he says. “It’s not easy; not everyone does it.’
Neon lighting was invented in Europe around 1910 and immediately put to use for signs. It came to the United States in 1923.
Neon lighting faded away after World War II. But in the 1960s, artists rediscovered the glowing tubes, sculpting illuminated shapes.
“I don’t think it would have occurred to the glass-benders of the ‘30s or ‘40s to make neon art, to make something that wasn’t completely utilitarian,” says Yuhasz.
Neon of the 1990s pulses with color. Glassbenders work with clear and colored tubes filled with neon or argon gas to create a range of shades and effects.
But manipulating the softened glass shafts in fountains of fire remains the true test of skill.
“You are only as good as your last bend,” says Yuhasz.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo