Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Schulte.
Lisa, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Was in The early ’80s when I discovered my love for light, started designing special events in Hollywood, working along with the biggest Event Planners at the time. My early designs involved the use of neon lights in a very abstract way and faced the difficulties of finding neon sign companies able to understand taking neon into another direction a creative way.
Most of the sign companies had only used neon for signs, and I was wanting 3-dimensional shapes created and hit roadblock after roadblock from all of them. So I decided to educate myself and studied Neon and headed to the only place at the time Kansas to study this art form.
Thankfully today there are many much closer places to study Neon. Armed with much more knowledge I pushed the local sign boys to start to create outside of their comfort zone, but still was not able to get what I wanted, so I started my own company Nights of Neon in 1984.
Nights of Neon is a unique boutique house for custom neon fabrication, creating my own personal art for my gallery and Museum shows, along with a collection of 10,000 neon rentals available for film and Television world and special events and pop-ups.
Has it been a smooth road?
Every day there is a struggle of some sort, but I just look at them as growing pains and happy that I can still learn something every day. I think when you start off you just do not know any better and you have 2 cents to rub together, but you have real passion you just keep going forward and you start to see you have a talent and people respond positively to your work it fuels your fire inside to keep going.
These days finding creative alone time is harder as I now have to put on many hats during the course of the day, I have a team of people working alongside me now and all their personalities, so it’s just not me to consider, I have real financial responsibilities of keeping us all employed and running the company according to the rules and regulations….. so at times it can get me down as I feel I do not have as much time to just create.
But 2019, I am making more room for myself and my art, and handing off more responsibilities to some of my staff to keep the company going in the right direction so I can create much more, get back to my roots and feed my inner soul. 2018 was challenging as I had many shows, solo group and just set up my Solo Museum Show so today I am feeling very thankful
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I would say I am the go-to girl for anything different, difficult, time-sensitive for the Film world, art world I am respected for all my 40 years into this art form and have a way with light and my creative use of the media I did not just take the title “the neon queen “ for Instagram “ I was given that name by my clients and friends so guess I earned the name, so hopefully that speaks for its self.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I think Los Angeles is a good place, but you better be the best as the competition is harder in big cities and your clients have come to experience and expect the best here.
Nowadays with so many classes and schools teaching neon, think it gives a false sense to people who take a weekend class and walk away saying they are neon artists.
This is an art form that takes many years to develop, took me around 15 years to even say I was a neon artist, so to see and hear people call them selfs that right away is concerning me as there will be some very poor neon art out in the world …
My advice would be try to get a job with an experienced neon company so you can learn so much more than a weekend class will teach you and learn it the right way!
Contact Info:
- Address: 13815 Saticoy St Panorama City, Ca 91402
- Website: Nightsofneon.com
- Phone: 818-756-4791
- Email: contact@nightsofneon.com
- Instagram: Theneonqueen
- Other: Www.lisaschulteneonartist.com
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
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