Different Career

Erik Sine · November 1, 2005

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

By Judy Laurinatis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If there were a gauge for such things, Michele Johnston would probably have the most interesting answer to the cocktail party question: So what do you do for a living?

That's because the 34-year-old Penn Hills woman makes her living, literally, in neon lights.

For the past three years, she has been the owner of The Neon Connection on Allegheny River Boulevard in Penn Hills.

She thinks it was a crazy decision to buy the business where she had worked for six years when the owner decided to change careers. She had learned the art of neon sign-making on the job and had honed her creative side attending The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. But Johnston wondered whether she would succeed.

She just knew she didn't want another job like the one she had fresh out of the Art Institute. Johnston worked for a clock manufacturer and made the round trim for the clock faces before she started to work with neon signs.

"I bent circles eight hours a day," Johnston remembers.

So at age 27, Johnston became her own boss and a business owner. And things just fell into place. She moved the business from the South Side to Penn Hills to be closer to home. She set up the shop and took advantage of some serendipitous connections with people who would become her employees.

Pete Maguire, The Neon Connection's graphic designer, took a chance that he would be able to use his talents when he and his wife moved from his native Connecticut to Springdale so his wife could be closer to her family. The industrial designer and commercial artist applied just as Johnston was hiring. Then, when the glass worker employed by the former owner left, Johnston remembered a visit from a former New York City man who had stopped in to say hello. After all, Johnston knew the skills needed for neon sign-making are specialized, to say the least, so the man's visit stuck with her.

"Neon benders are hard to find," she said. But the man, Hugh Elliot, had once owned a neon sign shop in New York. He sold it and followed a job opportunity with an architectural firm to Pittsburgh.

Johnston called, and Elliot was happy to accept her offer. "I was kind of anxious to get back into it," he said.

The fourth employee in her shop is someone she's known all of her life. Her father, Michael Dulaney, just happened to have skills as a carpenter that Johnston needed for the mounting units for signs she and her staff make. He's the only part-time worker. With the staff in place, it hasn't taken long for Johnston's neon sign shop business to take off. They create signs for new businesses or established companies.

Pubs, a candy store and even a vintage furniture store opening in Lawrenceville have or will have a bright Neon Connection sign in the window.

Johnston's shop has repaired the New Kensington Town Clock -- a natural for a young woman who once worked for a clock manufacturer -- and the vandalized Sandcastle water park sign in Homestead.

They did a special order sign for a movie company that needed a sign for a shot of a diner. And they will create a sign for the family who wants to brighten up the rec room.

Maguire spends time with potential customers, getting a feel for what they want. Then he creates a sign pattern on a computer in reverse so that the smooth, showy side of the tube will be in view on the finished product.

Prices start around $200.

Most people are curious about how neon signs work and might be surprised to learn that not all of the colorful signs are filled with neon gas.

The familiar glass tubes used to create the bright signs are actually like a neutral field, awaiting color. They are lined with a powered substance that reacts to either argon or neon gas. The cooler blues and greens in the sign are argon. Neon gas creates the "hotter" pink, red and orange colors.

Once the sign is designed and constructed, it is hooked to an electrical current that sets off the reaction. The whole thing is mounted so it can be displayed easily and turned on or shut off as the owner wishes. Johnston said her company also does the installation.

She said she'll make signs for as long as possible because she loves it. Both Johnston and Maguire said the neon sign business has its ups and downs but right now it's in an up cycle.

"Neon is coming back," Johnston said.