WORKSHOP

LADY BENDS THE TUBES

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Shawna Peterson was in the middle of completing a degree in psychology when she landed a part-time job “babysitting the store” at a neon shop to help pay her way through school. After two years, she started an old-fashioned apprenticeship with the tube bender after work, mastering each step before she was allowed to proceed to the next. “Even after five years, you’re still not a journeyman,” she says matter-of-factly. Twenty years later, she’s a master glass bender who divides her time between creating commercial neon for businesses, teaching neon bending at her workshop in Emeryville, Calif., and making neon artwork, whether commissioned or her own. Does her background studying cognition help? “Bending a neon pattern is like working a mental puzzle, every time,” she says. “You need to plan it out, carefully and creatively.”

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Peterson’s workshop is packed with her own work and the tools, both high-tech and humble, of her trade. Her crossfires for bending the glass tubing are pretty impressive, but she admits that her favorite tool is a 15-year-old charred wood block that she uses to cool freshly bent glass. While glass-bending technology hasn’t changed much since the early days, she’s the possessor of a modern, greaseless O-ring vacuum manifold for emptying oxygen and other impurities from the bent tubes and then pumping in neon and argon. Once the tubes are sealed and wired to the transformer, it’s time to let there be light. After all, “There’s nothing more satisfying than building something from scratch and then lighting it up.”

—Arwen O’Reilly

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120 Make: Volume 10