NEON

Michael Wood 

Excerpts from The Roanoke Times

 By Tamara Gaskin | The Roanoke Times

In the more than 20 years he’s spent as a neon artist, Wood, a Boones Mill native and Franklin County High School graduate,  has helped shape pieces of Roanoke history. Last year, he bent more than 2,000 feet of glass for major renovations to the Mill Mountain Star, a job that took him about a week. He also replaced neon tubing for the H&C Coffee sign in downtown Roanoke.

He joined the Kinsey Sign Co. in 1984 and not long after, Wood was sent to Richmond for a crash course in neon signmaking with the Tyson Sign Co. For two weeks, he learned to heat, bend and light glass to create signs for commercial and personal use. “I’ve still got the same first pieces I put together,” Wood said.

After several years with Kinsey, Wood left Roanoke in the early 1990s to work for Powers Signs in Danville. When he returned home about five years later he briefly went into business for himself, obtaining a license from Virginia Tech to make neon signs featuring the school’s logo and the Hokie Bird. Even though he found many buyers interested in his Hokie-spirited installations (which sold for roughly $200 each), Wood found that the overall demand for neon at that time was low, making it difficult to stay afloat.

Luckily, Keith Martin and Susan Shuler, owners of Sav’On Signs, were all too happy to bring him aboard.

“He wasn’t getting the wholesale work like he is here. The demand has definitely gone up since then,” Shuler said.

Sav’On is a full production sign house, so the company has the manpower to make, install and service the signs it produces. In the five years he’s worked there, Wood has been able to focus on simply creating the neon.

“That’s one of the reasons I like being with a sign company like this. I just enjoy working with the glass, I don’t have to worry about going to install it,” Wood said.