Neon Nostaglia: Works by Alison LaMons

Alison LaMons, a local emerging artist, uses vibrant watercolor to paint neon signs, both real and imagined. LaMons feels that combination of text and iconography in neon signs gives her the freedom and the vocabulary to shape her message.

Georges Claude displayed the first neon lamp to the public on December 11, 1910, in Paris. Roughly a century later, neon lighting is becoming a thing of the past. For LaMons, a neon sign is the perfect metaphor for life in the 20th century – a “quintessential artifact of a culture, a century, and a country.” It encapsulates our consumerism, artificiality, and the ephemeral nature of it all.

“This is neon. It tells the story of our lives. It shows us all of what we are (the glory as well as the grit), how we live in all its facets and from where we have come in one hundred years of modern and post modern history.”

Exhibition overview from museum website