NEON GOOD LUCK HORSE SHOE Print

Todd Sanders’ neon art evokes a time when America fell in love with motion. We hopped in the family wagon to explore the nation’s highways and byways, lured to motels, diners and curious roadside attractions by the colorful glow of gas molecules dancing inside artfully shaped tubes. The sign masters who crafted those slices of Americana are Sanders’ heroes, and he’s built a career designing and creating original, entirely handmade neon works using their time-honored techniques. He calls his style modern vintage, but considers himself a pop artist, sharing a rich artistic vein mined by Andy Warhol and other pop-culture iconographers. A Houston native who began pursuing his muse in earnest after moving to Austin, Sanders’ work is prized by collectors. Clients include Willie Nelson, Shepard Fairey, Norah Jones, Johnny Depp, ZZ Top and Kings of Leon, for whom he created the neon work appearing on the cover of their latest album, 2013’s Mechanical Bull. Sanders’ pieces have appeared in several films, including most of Robert Rodriguez’s projects and Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life,” as well as the pages of Esquire, Fortune, Texas Monthly and Southern Living magazines. The original version of his most popular design, his animated “Fireflies in a Mason Jar,” was created for the wedding of fellow Texan Miranda Lambert to Blake Shelton. Several of his works have hung in the Museum of Neon Art in Los Angeles, which is now constructing a permanent home in Glendale, Calif. Sanders also earned recognition in the Neon Group’s 2010 national design competition and was invited to participate as a special featured artist in the 2014 Architectural Digest Home Design Show. The juried event, held each March in New York City, is considered North America’s top luxury-market design show. Like Warhol, Sanders started out studying graphic art in college, then worked in the field before shifting to fine art. He painted signs to pay his tuition at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, but saw his future during a spring-break trip that took him through Austin. “We were driving around Austin for 10 minutes and I saw the neon signs and I felt the vibe of the city and it just hit me: I’m going move to Austin and I’m going build neon signs,” he recalls. He quit college and headed to Austin, where he lived in a vintage camping trailer and pestered the owners of a neon sign shop until they finally hired him for a short-term project.