In March of 2006, Schenectady, NY-based Ray Sign received a call from NYC-based Edelman Leather, which tans leather for upholstery and architectural applications, to develop a window sign from sheet aluminum and neon. Shop owner Russ Hazen and his staff didn’t think the sign would yield an unusual project. However, when Arthur Edelman, the store’s co-proprietor, visited Ray and presented the design, they knew the job would reprise an interesting snippet of art history.
"Arthur wanted us to recreate a design that Andy Warhol had developed for them in 1959, before he gained the status of cultural icon," Tim Prescott, Ray’s sales manager, said. "We hand-rendered sketches and scanned them into vector art using CorelDraw® and PhotoShop®."
Using the scans, Ray Sign output the image as a 4 x 9-ft. print, which it output on an Avery Dennison Graphics & Reflective Products Div. cast film with its Mimaki USA JV5-130S with solvent ink and coated with a gloss overlaminate. The shop affixed the print to a .063-in. aluminum cabinet and sheathed it with Plexiglas® acrylic sheet.
Against this backdrop, the shop fashioned 8- and 10mm neon tubing with a brilliant color array: EGL Co. Inc. (Newark, NJ) bromo blue, red, green, horizon blue, yellow and incandescent white (EGL custom-fabricated the latter). Stephen Gabree bent the neon and Craig Most handled fabrication and assembly. To minimize its weight, they opted for nine, |2203| electronic power supplies instead of a traditional, magnetic model.
Prescott said, "We enjoyed this job because custom-neon projects are rare, and it was especially enjoyable to create a sign based on the design of a legend such as Andy Warhol."
The first sign is scheduled to be installed in Edelman’s Gotham location later this month. Subsequently, Ray will produce sign for the company’s seven other nationwide locations.