Few people can understand the irony of the Neon Vancouver/Ugly Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»exhibit at the Museum of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»better than Rob Gillette.
As one of the few sign-makers who still knows how to bend glass tubes, he was instrumental in helping to restore the vintage neon signs that give the exhibit its irresistibly kitschy glow. But while the exhibit celebrates such craftsmanship, and revels in the artistic value of the one-of-a-kind signs, Gillette compares himself to Wile E. Coyote. Hes hanging onto the cliffs edge, wondering when his business is going to fall into the abyss.
Id give it another 10 years and there may not be any glass benders left, says Gillette, who owns Steelhead Signs in Langley.
Few customers are willing to pay for the time it takes to create a hand-crafted sign, whether its with neon, wood or paint. Everythings done on computer, threatening to make his skills obsolete. Modern-day consumers do not want to have to pay someone to make what a machine or computer can churn out faster and less expensively.
With neon, the obstacles are not only monetary. People tsk-tsk how much electricity is needed to light up these beacons of commercialism. Energy-efficient LED lights are the darlings of todays green consciousness.
Take pleasure in the beauty of this rare and disappearing art form, says Jacque Duguay of Pattison Sign Co., which funded the restoration.
And so, while the Museum of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»gives us a nostalgic yearning for the citys neon heyday, our own consumer choices are making survival much more difficult for the craftsmen who can make these signs.
Such ironies are not lost on the curator of the exhibit, Joan Seidl. As she oversaw the restoration of the 23 signs that are part of the museums collection, she marvelled at all the unique design elements that are no longer seen on city streets and mourned the loss of such individuality.
Today I pine for some of the brilliant idiosyncrasies of neon signs, she said at the exhibits October 12 opening. She also asked the crowd to question what blinders we might be wearing today. Why is it that what was seen as a blight on Vancouvers streetscape in the 1970s is now deemed worthy of such public attention and celebration? What despised icons of todays consumer world will be delighting museum-goers 25 years from now?
Like Gillette, she believes that every society develops an eye for what it deems to be attractive. Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»in the 1970s was called to wake up from its neon nightmare and yet compared to todays onslaught of mass-produced signs, each clamouring to find a spot amidst the visual cacophony, neon now seems the stuff dreams can be made of.
We need to be aware of these shifts of perception as we walk down Vancouvers streets today, Siedl says. If we dont want one row of businesses to look just like the next row, celebrate those who take risks and express individuality. There has to be some element of surprise in our streetscape.
As for pulling the power plug on neon, she says Id argue that the nature of beauty is that you have to get your green points somewhere else.
When I first moved to Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»[in the 1960s], I saw this light feast as a joyous celebration, says Audrey Doray She was a friend of the late Walter Griba, the photographer whose images of Vancouvers streets put the debate about the signs in context. Sometimes perching on top of a streetlight, his photos give us a sense of how we were bombarded by the plethora of signs, neon or not.
Nancy Noble, the CEO of the museum, says this exhibition poses questions about how the city struggled with its identity in the 50s and 60s and led to a kind of self-consciousness that Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»continues to struggle with today. So they are relevant questions both then and now and that is at the heart of what we are trying to do at the Museum of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» ask questions, foster dialogue and explore the city from many different perspectives including putting history in the context of our contemporary experiences.
The museum is going to explore neons past and future more full in its first virtual exhibition called Illuminating Neon, which will include an augmented reality phone app. It will be launched next autumn.
