The Neon King of New Orleans
Source: Hacker News
If New Orleans has a siren song, it’s neon. The Hotel Monteleone’s signature rooftop sign smolders red against the skyline. Tropical Isle’s sinister green beckons revelers to brave its Hand Grenade cocktail. Retro pink script scrawls above the columns of the Uptown diner Camellia Grill, and the Joy Theater’s marquee electrifies Canal Street with nostalgic romance. But the art undergirding all that neon is a dying one.
Nate Sheaffer and Big Sexy Neon
Since opening his shop, Big Sexy Neon, in 2020, Nate Sheaffer has worked to save the city’s historic signs and its luminous aesthetic, tinkering with century‑old glass or crafting brand‑new tubing, as well as designing his own flashy pieces. The workspace, recently relocated to nearby Metairie and filled floor‑to‑ceiling with eye‑popping originals, demands a visit. There you might find him wielding canisters of argon and krypton, beads of mercury, welding torches, and enough voltage to murder a moose.
Photo: BRYAN TARNOWSKI
The artist shapes glass tubing for a work in progress.
“I should be dead,” Sheaffer says, his broad six‑foot‑five frame bent over the tiny jumper cables he attaches to high‑voltage transformers that set the neon alight with a jolt. “I once got electrocuted so badly, the blast dislocated my shoulder.”
His commissions come with other dangers: dealing with historic landmarks in New Orleans can set off explosive reactions, too.
Preservation of Historic Signs
Take Tujague’s. The city’s second‑oldest restaurant had to relocate a few blocks away on Decatur Street in 2020, and last year the owners removed its landmark, enormous neon sign. A furious preservationist army united online, and Reddit threads glowed red. Pressure prevailed, and the Tujague’s sign secured a safe, permanent future; private donors sent it to Sheaffer for refurbishing, and it now burns inside the Southern Food and Beverage Museum.
Background and Training
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, the youngest of eight children, Sheaffer describes his youth as financially poor but educationally rich. “My dad was a machinist for the railway equipment company,” he explains. “I saw my parents make and repair everything.” At UNC‑Chapel Hill he switched his studies from physics to arts, and professor‑artist Jerry Noe introduced him to the craft of American neon. After running neon shops in North Carolina for several decades, “it was a woman who took me to New Orleans,” he admits with a laugh. “It didn’t hurt that this city has incredible neon history.”
History of Neon in New Orleans
Neon was discovered in 1898, and sign makers began filling tubes with the noble gas a little more than a decade later. “It’s still done the same way,” Sheaffer says. “It’s totally sustainable. I can reuse everything I need from old signs.” While any noble gas—argon, krypton, xenon, helium—can illuminate tubing, neon was the name that stuck. “By the 1950s, New Orleans had more neon than Las Vegas. Canal Street had six hundred signs within a few blocks.”
Challenges and the Future of Neon Signage
“To learn neon takes a decade, to become proficient, so it’s not a career people can intensely study any longer. Few offer apprenticeships. Plus, China took over beer‑sign production in the late nineties. Now everything is LED. It’s cheaper and faster to produce, but just garbage when it breaks. Maintained neon signs will last a hundred years or more.”
Sheaffer’s storytelling runs through his personal pieces, which often incorporate reclaimed wood, children’s toys, and old advertisements accented with neon. He has exhibited nationally, and while there’s been a resurgence of the art, the future is dimmer for signage.
Photo: BRYAN TARNOWSKI
A phrenology head by Sheaffer.
Standing on his butcher‑paper sketches that litter the floor at Big Sexy Neon, Sheaffer demonstrates how he heats, blows, and bends the glass. A stage called “aging” requires a drop of liquid mercury to coax the color, and then he finishes with those tiny jumper cables that nearly killed him.
Commission Example
In addition to his own pieces, Sheaffer accepts commissions. I dropped off a throwback 1930s toy ray gun. Two weeks later, he installed it over my powder‑room sink, mounted on a dark base and angled upward. When we flipped the switch, neon zapped from the gun in red lightning bolts with blue, concentric blast circles. I sounded a hearty “pew pew!” and we clapped like kids.