When you think of the biggest little city in the world, you might find yourself imagining the iconic Reno arch – a dazzling, fluorescent sign that lights up the city’s night sky. This neon sign is a long-time landmark of Nevada, inviting both locals and visitors from all over the world to explore the city that it frames.
Neon light itself holds a significant part of Nevada’s history, even becoming the official state element in 2019. Yet, many of these classic signs have become worn with time or even forgotten and tossed in the junkyard.
As a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno, Janice Baker was passionate about Nevada’s iconic neon and interested in doing something to both showcase its history and help preserve it.
“I love and appreciate the creativity and artistry that goes into creating a neon sign,” Baker said. “From the neon colors and typography to the animation, we just don’t see signs like this anymore.”
Baker decided that her final graduate project for her master’s degree in media innovation would highlight and conserve Nevada’s neon.
“I received a University newsletter that featured Dr. Hepworth’s research on the digital archive for our state’s neon,” Baker said. “It immediately clicked with me, and shortly after reading the article, I proposed my idea to recreate the signs in 3D and launch them in augmented reality (AR).”
Baker had earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in design and visual communication from Weber State University and, at the time, was working on a master’s degree in the Reynolds School of Journalism. Her educational background created a solid foundation to start her project in July of 2020. However, recreating classic neon signs in a virtual medium was a new undertaking.
“Before I started building my first neon sign, I had quite the learning curve ahead of me,” Baker said. “Not only did I need to learn how to create 3D models, [but I also] had to first learn how neon was made.”
Will Durham, the executive director of the Nevada Neon Project, supported Baker in her project by helping her to further understand neon and how to rework it, as well as providing her with signs to virtually refurbish from his own collection.
She spent half of the summer of 2020 diving into the 3D software that she would use to bring this project to life. Next, Baker decided on the first sign that she would tackle: the Mapes Cowboys – a towering two-cowboy sign that was previously used to form the “M” of the Mapes Hotel.
“This first sign took me over 60 hours to build,” Baker said. “It wasn’t until I started working on the other signs where I realized that the Mapes Cowboys was one of the most intricate and complex signs of them all.”
Another memorable sign for Baker was The Silver Spur. The glow of this sign previously signaled the no-longer-existing Silver Spur Motel. She spent hours hand-painting every brushstroke of the spur, only to find an easier way …….
Source: https://www.unr.edu/x272855.xml