Cover page on Kodachrome neon article issue #3 2018. This is one of William Binzen’s large format pix of Desert Site Works #1 Black Rock Springs Nevada 1992. The neon installations are mine. There is a multiple artist performance ritual taking place in the springs encircled in underwater neon installations. Dangerous? Not really, but “electrifying”.

Underwater neon installation, Desert Site Works, Black Rock Springs, 1992

neon installation, Desert Site Works, Black Rock Springs, 1992

Neon installation, Desert Site Works, Black Rock Springs, 1992

Neon installation (by John Law) Desert Site Works, Trego Springs, 1993. photo by John Law

Kodak Corporation launched a magazine called Kodachrome last year, published in London. In the third issue there are two features that I am presenting here on my blog. The first feature is an article on William Binzen and his protean project Desert Site Works, an event built with the help of Judy West, artists from Project Artaud with major support from The Cacophony Society.
I was a collaborator on this project and in addition to making several large scale site specific neon art installations as part of the overall large scale installation tableaus, I was the operations and transport manager for these ambitious desert art events.

Neon installation (by John Law) and Kingpost truss bridge installation (by William Binzen) Desert Site Works, Trego Springs, 1993. photo of Wm Binzen & art by John Law

The entire article from Issue #3 of Kodachrome Magazine Sept 2017 on William and DSW can be seen in the pdf images at the bottom of this article. I have written more extensively about Desert Site Works HERE.

Neon installation (by John Law) Desert Site Works, Trego Springs http://www.323gallery.org/Siteworks.html, 1993. photo by John Law

Neon installation (by John Law) Desert Site Works, Trego Springs, 1993. photo by John Law

Neon installation (by John Law) Desert Site Works, Trego Springs, 1993. photo by John Law

There is another article in the same issue that covers three neon pioneers from different parts of the world. The three are: David Hill and his Warsaw Poland Neon Museum (the largest in Europe), Aric Chen who is the go-to guy in Hong Kong for neon in HK movies and for pretty much anything else, and the third neon dude is lil Ol me here in San Francisco. This April, I was asked to moderate the first ever countrywide neon symposium, hosted by the Tenderloin Museum in San Francisco. Hosted by the dynamic duo of illumination, Randal Ann Holman & Al Barna, this was a wonderful meeting of neon professionals, writers, historians, artists and neon fans and fanatics from across the USA.  My history with neon and electrical signage began when I worked as a permit and survey technician for Ad-Art Sign Company in the early 80’s and more importantly when I became a sign hanger/service man for Federal Signal Corporation subsidiary Federal Sign Company Ad-Art & American Neon Sign Co. a couple of years later. Before my first hire in the electrical sign industry, I worked in signs as a teenager and worked for commercial sign companies (non-electrical signs) from 1979 on.

“FUN” John Law 2012 14′ x 4′ wood, steel, neon. all materials salvaged and repurposed. Made for SF Cyclecide – displayed at various events and galleries around SF

I realized a while back that over my 34 year association with the “noble gas” I actually had done a lot of pretty weird things with neon. My friend Natalia Mount, Director of Pro-Arts Gallery in Oakland  pointed this out to me while convincing me I should do a show with her curating at Pro-Arts. Coming from the Suicide Club, Cacophony and a solid trade work (electrical signs) background, I never really considered myself an artist. I can’t paint. I have never been able to draw anything even remotely recognizable as a human figure or a landscape. I guess it is all really how one defines things. 

One of the first neon art projects I began was lighting the Burning Man figure.

JL Placing neon arched border tubing in front of Burning Man figure in 1992

The first year in the Black Rock Desert (August –
September 1990) I place a half circle of white neon at the base of the figure uplighting it and I mounted two incandescent spots on the figures thighs pointing up to illuminate the torso and head. The following year in 1991 I gave the figure a neon skeleton for the first time, placing the neon units inside the figures skeleton. The next year, 1992 was the first time the neon was mounted on the front of the entire figure. Original Suicide Club member Louis Brill was the first journalist to write about the Burning Man’s illumination for Signs of the Times magazine in 1992.

Neon arched border tubing in front of Burning Man figure in 1992

“Junk Neon Ace” sign made for Billy “The Junkman” Kennedy and his Ace Auto Dismantlers Junkyard & Art Venue early 2000’s

“Joe Camel” by Jack Napier (John Law) and the Billboard liberation Front, 1995. photo by Nicole Rosenthal. This is the only illegal neon billboard alteration/hack/prank that I know of.

I have been servicing the neon and tower lighting on the iconic Oakland Tribune Tower since 1988 when I first hung in a bosuns chair on the neon clocks with Steve Bagley of American Neon Sign Company and Billy Greves of Federal Sign.

Most of my creative life, from age 18 when I joined the proto-urbex, pranks and social experimentation cabal, The Suicide Club, until not that long ago, I never thought of what we were doing as art. The Suicide Club was not an “art” group. Nor was the later Cacophony Society despite the fact that both featured some members that certainly were artists. My mentor, visionary founder of The Suicide Club Gary Warne would have bridled had anyone accused him of perpetrating art, and I, his youthful protege adopted his antipathy for that particular designation. There was a reason for this stance. What we were doing in that early group was intended to be life – the real thing, not some symbol or simulacrum of actual human intercourse or real life.

I made this 16 foot diameter spinning neon cone for The Survival Research Labs Doom Show in 1994 with the assistance of Vanessa Kuemmerle, Michael Mikel & Robert Rogers. It raced open a 200 foot long cale to smash into the concrete floor and be attacked by massive fire breathing machines.

“Detroit” 2016 – aquarium, neon, matchbox cars, astroturf, & crystal ball. 24″ x16″ by 12″

Landmark Hills Bros Coffee sign Embarcadero at the Bay Bridge, San Francisco

Hanging out on the 20th floor of the Oakland Tribune Tower.

The people I admire most are artists. They obsess over their work; in many cases they give up convention, comfort and security to pursue it. Artists are by far the hardest workers I know. I can speak on this matter with some authority for I have led a dual life of sorts. In addition to my underground pranksters life, I have been a journeyman tradesmen for decades now. Trade work can be very hard physically. It can grind a fellow or a gal down and many of these workers put in their grueling 8-16 hour days and simply collapse with a drink or three when the work day is done. So many artists have the day job AND THEN they work as long or longer on their own art. Try to do both for a year or so – not so easy. I was (and remain for the time being) an electrical sign hanger, designer and service man. For this kind of career you must be conversant with several areas of craft and trade work: rigging and crane work, electrical circuits, basic construction and field installation, metal work and plastic, with some finish woodworking skills as well. That’s how I have paid my bills.

25′ tall rotating neon star atop the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. Working for my company, Central Sign Services, I restored this incredible sign in 1999 with Paul Norton of Service One Neon Co.

Much of the work is tedious and punishing physically: climbing ladders, drilling holes in concrete. granite, wood facades, crawling through attics pulling wire, digging holes for sign footings, hanging on ropes and swing stages, wiring electrical fixtures, painting, welding and wrenching on signs while 100 feet up in a crane bucket. Some few jobs are quite fabulous though – the high neon displays that everyone knows because they loom (sometimes) majestically above the dense frenetic cityscape.

A classic sign restoration of mine with Central Sign Services for The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. photo by Mark Ellinger.

I have worked on many if not most of these displays in the Bay Area. The three I still service today are the Port of San Francisco sign atop the Ferry Building, The Hills Bros Coffee sign at the Bay Bridge & Embarcadero, SF and my office building, The Tribune Tower in Oakland. Each of these three are historic relics of a more serious and grounded era. They are huge classic neon displays from a world that took such things seriously and created these altars to commerce and progress that somehow over time have come to transcend their base commercial purpose. Some signs actually resonate powerfully with many citizens as part of the mental and cultural landscape. As an example, Hill Bros has not been a coffee plant for decades, yet the sign is so iconic that the various banks and real estate concerns that have owned the building it adorns have been compelled by public interest (and marketing schemes) to retain the now non-commercial sign. I am very fortunate to be connected to these fabulous monuments.

I serviced this sign in Crockett CA for several years in the late 80’s – early 90’s while working for Ad-Art Sign Co. This is the largest neon display in Northern California. I would ride a bosun’s chair the entire length and height of the sign changing light bulbs and repairing neon as my foreman George Edwards lowered materials to me on a rope.

In more recent years, I have had little choice but to accept the appellation and baggage that goes along with being called an “artist.” Our culture seems to demand that concession – the agreement that you somehow fit into an acceptable box so that you are “understood”.

I still can’t draw, paint or sculpt clay or stone, but in my defense, I have made a bunch of things over the years including singular neon pieces, both wall or standing pieces as well as large scale outdoor “environmental” and “site specific” sculpture.

Neon logo for Monkey Brains ISP in San Francisco. I made and installed this 15 foot diameter sign for a friends business and installed it without permission or permits on an industrial building in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco.

Neon Gears donated to a fundraiser for SRL crewman Todd Blair‘s medical needs after an industrial art accident.

I have produced photographs that took some trouble and thought to compose. I’ve written 3 books, 2 published. I’ve conceived, created, and led many, many “events” and collaborated on making hundreds more, that others might mistake for being “art”. Journalists, some of my friends, other artists and the random passer by have mistaken me for being an artist for many years now. So I give up and give in. Part of the process of aging is shedding stuff and consolidating what is left. So I’ll settle for being an artist.

This post is the first of several detailing this personal process. The work showcased in this post is neon art. More to come…

Kodachrome Magazine article on William Binzens work with Desert Site Works and Burning Man

Kodachrome Magazine article on William Binzens work with Desert Site Works and Burning Man