I am currently participating in an exhibition titled Call It What It Is: A Neon Show Of Banned Words. It visualizes the growing list of words that are being flagged by the Trump administration and scrubbed from government documents and websites. It is quite an extensive list, and serves as an attempt to silence voices and conversations about “woke” subjects and policies. This post is mostly to document the process of making my words and includes images of the exhibition, but I encourage you to visit PEN America’s website, where you can learn more about how our freedom of speech is under threat, and to view the full list of banned words.
The 2 words I picked from the list to make were ‘belong’ and ‘ideology’. I chose them because they are pretty ordinary, and not ones that you would expect to see on a list of Banned Words. We were encouraged by the curators to use any styling and colors we wanted, with the only requirement that our letters were to be 5″- 7″ tall. I knew I wanted to make one of the words in an outline style letter, and do the other in lowercase letters. After browsing a database of different lettering fonts, I settled on a couple that I liked and drew up my bending patterns. I do this by tracing the design onto a piece of clear acetate, then enlarging it on the wall using an overhead projector so I can draw my pattern to scale.
Here are the finished patterns lying on my work table, just before I started the glasswork.
When you make a design for a neon sign, you do the glassbending of the image in reverse. This is so the jumps between letters and the parts where the glass needs to go behind another section are more easily hidden from view.
Since I was going to ship the words across the country, I needed to consider the possibility that they could break in transit, and if that happened, I wanted them to be easier to remake, so I divided the words into short sections. This also allowed me to pack them in smaller-sized boxes, which would also cut down on shipping costs.
I thought BELONG was a good word to make from many different colors.
I made Ideology in purple, just because I really like that color.
After the neon was finished, it was time to prepare for sending it across the country, 2800 miles away. My goal was to pack everything so it didn’t slide around inside the box during transit, and to keep the boxes as small as possible. I also wanted to design the packing so it would be easy to unpack and re-pack, as the show travelled to its next location. I decided to make a “lasagne”, taping the units to pieces of foam core board, separating each layer with spacers, and stacking them on top of each other. Then I made straps using ribbon, so the whole thing could lift easily out of the box.
After I put each word lasagne into a box, I put each one of those boxes into a second box, padded with lots of foam and bubble wrap. I think it took me almost as long to pack it up for shipping as it did for me to make the words! It was worth the time and effort, though, because everything arrived in one piece.
Although I wasn’t able to see the exhibition in person, I did view it through the excellent photographs taken by Hannah Scoyni, aka Hank Loves Neon. Below is a photo gallery of some of the images she took of the exhibition.
Curated by Marisa Manso and Tommy Gregory, Call It What It Is: A Neon Show of Banned Words is an ongoing and ever-evolving exhibition, with more artists and words being added for each incarnation.
The first showing was in September, at The Factory in Seattle, WA.
The show travels next to Steve Gilbert Gallery in November, also in Seattle, and from there will go to San Antonio, TX and other select cities. I will update this post as I get detailed information regarding dates and venues.
