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I’m very pleased to share well deserved good publicity for Dana Paterson – from yesterday’s Friday Section (with glowing photo)
Note, Dana Paterson – the “Dragon’s Heir” - is showing several of his abstract “Venetian” neon sculptures at a group exhibition at Loft Works next weekend – I’ll be certain to post an invitation.
From the PD: on Cleveland.com: www.cleveland.com/entertain.../index.ssf
After Dark
With John Petkovic
Neon is the light of one artist's life (and his meal ticket)
Friday, September 10, 2004
The mere fact that the Beachcomber has kept its doors open is a sign that life still flickers on the east side of Cleveland's Flats. If that isn't enough, the neon glow surely is.
Last May, the Cleveland Beachcomber & Tiki Bar, 1146 Old River Road, went in for an extreme makeover: Out with the Hooters leftovers; in with the something very different to complement the tropical theme.
Well, "something" added up to 4,000 feet of glowing tubes - blue, aqua, lavender and a touch of cherry pink neon up, down and all around.
"We weren't trying to assault people like in Vegas," says Sandy Kanieski, who oversaw the project for the Beachcomber. "We wanted to emphasize the mood and show people that, even from far away, this isn't a big black hole."
Most nights, the east bank looks like a shuttered boardwalk in some Jersey ghost town. The street is deserted. So are the buildings once packed with sweaty club-hoppers.
Then there's the Beachcomber - a downright radioactive hot spot in comparison.
"It's the neon," says Kanieski. "People are attracted to it like a magnet."
Dana Paterson's attraction to neon was born out of desperation.
For 20-plus years, the Cleveland artist responsible for the Beachcomber display has perfected the art form - the glass blowing, the bending, the intricate mixing of gasses that creates the glow.
"But it's not like neon was always my ambition," says Paterson. "It was the early '80s and I was homeless, living beneath the Terminal Tower. I was freezing and hungry - and needed a job, to live."
That's when Paterson, 49, came in from the cold and took a job with the Brilliant Electric Sign Co.
"After apprenticing, I learned that neon isn't just a sign," he says. "It's a modern art form."
No doubt. Though the roots of the neon sign go back to the 17th century, when Italian Evangelista Torricelli invented the barometer, it caught the public eye in 1910 when French inventor Georges Claude displayed the first neon lamp.
By the 1920s, marquees, deli shops and nightclubs were being illuminated with neon. By the 1940s, Vegas was awash in it - from motels to casinos such as Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel, which still boasts a flaming pink sign that screams neon.
(Las Vegas even boasts a Neon Museum. Check out neonmuseum.org.)
By the '70s, the scream had gotten so loud that neon was declared tacky and left to die a flickering death. The advent of plastic substitutes didn't help.
"It's too bad," says Paterson. "By the '80s, a lot of the original artists disappeared and many of the original shops started adopting these cheap, mass-produced methods."
Not Paterson.
He uses the same principles neon artists have used for decades. He not only draws his patterns by hand; he also heats, shapes and illuminates his own glass. The result: two months of nonstop labor to create the tubes for the Beachcomber, a project that Paterson and Kanieski call "a work in progress."
To say neon is an all-consuming endeavor is an understatement. His shop doubles as his apartment - he lives with his assistant, a dog named Beagle - and is lined with all sorts of stock old-style signs: "Deli," "Corned Beef," "Check Cashing."
"Those are just signs. This is what I'm really excited about," says Paterson, pointing to drawings of a devil and an assortment of '40s-style pinups.
"I'm doing the devil for a tattoo parlor," he says. "And check out these nude shots. Imagine this in neon. Man, you won't see that hanging around just anywhere."
Except in his show, perhaps.
Paterson is planning an exhibition of his work for this fall that will feature everything from provocative nudes to a series of abstract twisted bolts of color he's been working on.
"See, it isn't just some sign," says Paterson. "Neon is modern art - like Dali or Picasso or Warhol." At the very least, it's a sign that hope flickers on in that big, black hole known as the east side of the Flats.
To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:
jpetkovic@plaind.com, 216-999-4556
Note, Dana Paterson – the “Dragon’s Heir” - is showing several of his abstract “Venetian” neon sculptures at a group exhibition at Loft Works next weekend – I’ll be certain to post an invitation.
From the PD: on Cleveland.com: www.cleveland.com/entertain.../index.ssf
After Dark
With John Petkovic
Neon is the light of one artist's life (and his meal ticket)
Friday, September 10, 2004
The mere fact that the Beachcomber has kept its doors open is a sign that life still flickers on the east side of Cleveland's Flats. If that isn't enough, the neon glow surely is.
Last May, the Cleveland Beachcomber & Tiki Bar, 1146 Old River Road, went in for an extreme makeover: Out with the Hooters leftovers; in with the something very different to complement the tropical theme.
Well, "something" added up to 4,000 feet of glowing tubes - blue, aqua, lavender and a touch of cherry pink neon up, down and all around.
"We weren't trying to assault people like in Vegas," says Sandy Kanieski, who oversaw the project for the Beachcomber. "We wanted to emphasize the mood and show people that, even from far away, this isn't a big black hole."
Most nights, the east bank looks like a shuttered boardwalk in some Jersey ghost town. The street is deserted. So are the buildings once packed with sweaty club-hoppers.
Then there's the Beachcomber - a downright radioactive hot spot in comparison.
"It's the neon," says Kanieski. "People are attracted to it like a magnet."
Dana Paterson's attraction to neon was born out of desperation.
For 20-plus years, the Cleveland artist responsible for the Beachcomber display has perfected the art form - the glass blowing, the bending, the intricate mixing of gasses that creates the glow.
"But it's not like neon was always my ambition," says Paterson. "It was the early '80s and I was homeless, living beneath the Terminal Tower. I was freezing and hungry - and needed a job, to live."
That's when Paterson, 49, came in from the cold and took a job with the Brilliant Electric Sign Co.
"After apprenticing, I learned that neon isn't just a sign," he says. "It's a modern art form."
No doubt. Though the roots of the neon sign go back to the 17th century, when Italian Evangelista Torricelli invented the barometer, it caught the public eye in 1910 when French inventor Georges Claude displayed the first neon lamp.
By the 1920s, marquees, deli shops and nightclubs were being illuminated with neon. By the 1940s, Vegas was awash in it - from motels to casinos such as Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel, which still boasts a flaming pink sign that screams neon.
(Las Vegas even boasts a Neon Museum. Check out neonmuseum.org.)
By the '70s, the scream had gotten so loud that neon was declared tacky and left to die a flickering death. The advent of plastic substitutes didn't help.
"It's too bad," says Paterson. "By the '80s, a lot of the original artists disappeared and many of the original shops started adopting these cheap, mass-produced methods."
Not Paterson.
He uses the same principles neon artists have used for decades. He not only draws his patterns by hand; he also heats, shapes and illuminates his own glass. The result: two months of nonstop labor to create the tubes for the Beachcomber, a project that Paterson and Kanieski call "a work in progress."
To say neon is an all-consuming endeavor is an understatement. His shop doubles as his apartment - he lives with his assistant, a dog named Beagle - and is lined with all sorts of stock old-style signs: "Deli," "Corned Beef," "Check Cashing."
"Those are just signs. This is what I'm really excited about," says Paterson, pointing to drawings of a devil and an assortment of '40s-style pinups.
"I'm doing the devil for a tattoo parlor," he says. "And check out these nude shots. Imagine this in neon. Man, you won't see that hanging around just anywhere."
Except in his show, perhaps.
Paterson is planning an exhibition of his work for this fall that will feature everything from provocative nudes to a series of abstract twisted bolts of color he's been working on.
"See, it isn't just some sign," says Paterson. "Neon is modern art - like Dali or Picasso or Warhol." At the very least, it's a sign that hope flickers on in that big, black hole known as the east side of the Flats.
To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:
jpetkovic@plaind.com, 216-999-4556
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