Neon artists Linda Sue Price and Michael Flechtner presented new and glowing neon works at the Fine Arts Building, in a stellar summer show. While the exhibition just closed, Price and Flechtner will be back in mid-January at the venue, one perfectly suited to their medium and very different but brilliantly illuminated aesthetics.
Price makes abstract and figuratively abstract works that seem to grow as they shimmer, an appearance perfect for many of her current subjects, imagined plants with names like “Kapeeno” and “Critacy.”
Price’s use of neon beading is riveting. Another smart touch are neon plants springing from unique planters. Making the flora and fauna seem even more alive.
Some works on display are collaborative with artist Tracey Weiss, using Weiss’s found plastic elements to shape floral images woven with neon.
Flechtner uses more traditional components of neon work than Price. There’s signage styles turned wild as in his moving “x’s” in “Dos Equis,” and a life size figure of a robotic man in “Arms Akimbo.”
Cats wave their lucky arms in “Jan Ken Pon (rock-paper-scissor); rats pursue cheese in “Hickory Dickory (Who moved my cheese?).” Wit and fun merge with superior creativity in his work, which often moves from a homage to the age of kinetic neon signs to something insanely futuristic and shot through with the whimsical.
Together, the two artists’ highly accomplished works are extremely different in approach, but each astonishingly fresh and bold, tributes to imagination, joy, and lighting up their own respective messages.
Their commitment to craft – no spoiler here, neon bending is not a simple task, is beautiful and compelling. Take a look at some of their work here, and be sure to look out for their next show together in the beautiful glass encloesd niches of the Fine Arts Building lobby come January, a just-past-the-holidays present to savor.
- Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis