Bent on success: Neon signs are this man's craft

[Erik Sine]

Bent on success: Neon signs are this man's craft

How neon craftsman Michael Wood is able to shape pieces of local history

By Tamara Gaskin | The Roanoke Times

Michael Wood bends glass for a neon sign at Sav' On Signs in Vinton.

Wood recently helped restore the lights on the Mill Mountain Star.

Michael Wood’s job is easy.

OK, not really. But it’s tempting to think so when watching the neon bender do his thing.

Wood’s busy workshop at Sav’On Signs in Vinton is a tricky maze crammed with hundreds of tubes of glass, dozens of feet of electrical cords and a slew of works in progress. Yet amid the loud whirring of machines controlling gas, fire and electricity, the craftsman moves like he has a football field’s worth of clear space, holding conversations with ease while his fingers dance dangerously close to flames burning at several hundred degrees Fahrenheit. As he juggles a dense workload making installations for local businesses and homes, Wood stands as one of the few neon artists in Southwest Virginia.

Learning the craft

Wood, a Boones Mill native and Franklin County High School graduate, has always had a keen eye for art and grew up hoping to base a career on his talents.

“I was always interested in drawing, writing poetry, stuff like that,” he said.

However, his plans screeched to a near-final halt when Wood was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease at age 18. Fortunately, early detection gave him a leg up on beating the cancer.

“The cure rate at that point in time was about 80 percent. I took my last year out of high school for radiation treatments every day for six months. Being young like that, I think I took it pretty well. Everything, thank goodness, is going well,” said Wood, now 42. By his 19th birthday, he was in remission and has been ever since.

With the illness behind him, Wood re-embarked on his plan to make art for a living. With the help of his father, Roy Wood, he joined the Kinsey Sign Co. in 1984 to learn how to paint signs by hand.

But the Kinseys had other plans.

Not long after joining the company, Wood was sent to Richmond for a crash course in neon signmaking with the Tyson Sign Co. For two weeks, he learned to heat, bend and light glass to create signs for commercial and personal use. “I’ve still got the same first pieces I put together,” Wood said.

When he returned to Kinsey, Wood spent time between jobs practicing his new craft. As he became skilled with the neon, he gained more responsibility at the company and began creating his own signs, as well as doing repair work for other pieces around town.

Neon regains popularity

After several years with Kinsey, Wood left Roanoke in the early 1990s to work for Powers Signs in Danville. When he returned home about five years later he briefly went into business for himself, obtaining a license from Virginia Tech to make neon signs featuring the school’s logo and the Hokie Bird. Even though he found many buyers interested in his Hokie-spirited installations (which sold for roughly $200 each), Wood found that the overall demand for neon at that time was low, making it difficult to stay afloat.

Luckily, Keith Martin and Susan Shuler, co-owners of Sav’On Signs, were all too happy to bring him aboard.

“He wasn’t getting the wholesale work like he is here. The demand has definitely gone up since then,” Shuler said.

“You’d be surprised how many people in Roanoke like the neon now,” Wood said as he flipped through a book thick with pictures of his work. “I’ve done a lot of beer signs,” he added.

Sav’On is a full production sign house, so the company has the manpower to make, install and service the signs it produces. In the five years he’s worked there, Wood has been able to focus on simply creating the neon.

“That’s one of the reasons I like being with a sign company like this. I just enjoy working with the glass, I don’t have to worry about going to install it,” Wood said.

Being one of the few neon benders in the area keeps Wood busy. In 2004, the Roanoke Valley’s other neon artist, “Neon Man” Mark Jamison, died after being electrocuted while installing a sign in Salem.

Shuler estimated that Wood completes 60 projects in an average week. He also bends glass for other local sign companies, which send their clients’ requests for neon work to Sav’On.

The art of patience

Despite his crammed schedule, Wood rarely seems stressed. Even while he hustled to complete work on his biggest project to date —the Regal Cinemas at the New River Valley Mall — in just two weeks this past summer , Shuler said Wood was never harried.

“He does great work. I just know that he’s back there pumping them out as fast as he can,” she said. “He doesn’t get mad and throw glass across the table like some folks.”

Between projects, Wood nurtures his artistic side, spending his limited free time in the shop experimenting with decorative installations, like the 3-D mermaid that sits on his work counter.

“It was just a job when I started, just something to pay the bills,” Wood said. “But I’ve got a lot of patience and I like to see things work out to the right end.”

The Hardy home Wood shares with his wife, Amy, is filled with the products of his patience. His oldest son, 16-year-old Trevor, has both a Virginia Tech logo and a football helmet on his bedroom wall. Hannah, 11, has neon butterflies to keep her company, and 5-year-old Keaton has one of his father’s colorful abstract designs lighting up his room, but now wants a soccer ball.

“That one might be a bit tricky, but I’m working on it,” Wood said of his youngest child’s special request.

Wood’s hands have also helped shape pieces of Roanoke history. Last year, he bent more than 2,000 feet of glass for major renovations to the Mill Mountain Star, a job that took him about a week. He also replaced neon tubing for the H&C Coffee sign in downtown Roanoke.

In the more than 20 years he’s spent as a neon artist, Wood said his biggest challenge is staying focused. But when the end result is so rewarding, it’s easier to concentrate.

“I have to have my head together, but it’s just something I keep fooling with until I get it right,” he said. “With neon, the possibilities are endless. You can light something up so it can be different than how you usually see it. I guess I have some kind of passion for it.”

The bending process

* A pattern is made on a piece of paper large enough to mimic the actual size of the installation. This will help guide the dimensions of the glass as each piece is bent.

* Gas flame is used to heat and bend the glass into the correct shape, continually referring to the pattern.

* The piece is then bombarded, meaning it’s heated to roughly 450 degrees Fahrenheit to remove impurities and clean the tubing.

* After the glass cools, neon, sometimes mixed with additional gases such as argon or helium, is filtered into the tubing. The mixture of gases affects the color of the light.

* The tube is then closed and plugged in and will burn for several hours to ensure that the light’s color is uniform.

"In the Glow"

Anyone who has visited the “In the Glow” exhibit at the Science Museum of Western Virginia has encountered Michael Wood's neon depiction of Marvin the Martian.

Over the summer, Wood was invited to participate in the exhibit, which debuted in conjunction with the one-man production “The Neon Man and Me” during the Roanoke Arts Festival. The play was about Mark Jamison, a Roanoke Valley neon artist who died on the job in 2004.

The exhibit — which was curated by Museum of Neon Art founder Lili Lakich — details the science and history of neon and other illuminating gases.

“We wanted a local connection, and that’s really why we wanted to feature [Wood] in the exhibit,” said Nancy McCrickard, science museum executive director. “We’re very happy to have him involved here.”

“In the Glow” also celebrates Jamison and nationally recognized neon artists such as Candice Gawne and Larry Albright.

“He has one of the neatest things I’ve ever seen, a little two millimeter martini glass,” Wood said of Albright’s work. “It’s just amazing to see neon that small.”

After “In the Glow” leaves Roanoke in May, it will tour the country for several months before the core pieces of the exhibit are returned to the science museum for inclusion in the upcoming “How It Works” gallery.

“It’s just very important to have people know how neon works, because we’re the Star City. We want to heighten the awareness and thinking about the science that’s behind it,” McCrickard explained.

Being included in a standing installation suits Wood just fine, but he’s still a bit star-struck.

“They’re like rock stars to me,” he said of meeting Albright and others. “They really put neon in a different light.”