35 minute read
NOTED: In the Field
NOTED
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in the FIELD
In a land of snakes and ticks, there’s an unexpected danger
photos and words by MURRY BURGESS
Istartled myself when I realized I was reaching for a large ball of scales instead of the tiny bundles of feathers I’d been expecting. The rat snake was curled up in the chicks’ nest, its body spilling over the sides. It seemed to be resting peacefully after eating my research subjects. I climbed up my 20-foot ladder, wrestled the rat snake down, and transported it a bit up the road hoping it wouldn’t return. (It did, again and again.) Then I got back to work.
Every day that I do research, I double-check that I have all my safety equipment. I pack bug spray, a first-aid kit, extra water, and, at the insistence of my mom, sunscreen. I triple-check that I pack my knife, wallet, and ID. I load these supplies, plus my 3-year-old pitbull mix, into the car.
I am a Ph.D. student studying urban ecology and ornithology in the Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation program at North Carolina State University. For my research, I have been conducting a field experiment in rural Snow Camp, testing how Barn Swallow chicks respond to artificial light at night during their development. The experiment takes place inside an old wooden barn with LED Christmas lights hung over the nests as my anthropogenic light source.
As a first-year graduate student, I waited in my college’s safety seminar for the topic of confrontations with others to come up. We discussed basic first aid and venomous snake identification. We were taught how to safely remove ticks and monitor bites for disease. All the example photos showed the symptoms on white skin. “What do we do if we work in urban neighborhoods and men start harassing us?” asked one of my Black female colleagues.
“Just call the police,” said the professor.
But to us, the solution felt just as dangerous as the problem: in an era where headlines are filled with Black people killed by police during routine stops, calling the police feels like inviting more serious issues. We’d rather put up with the catcalls than turn someone into another hashtag, or worse, become one ourselves.
Most of my field career has been tinged with racism, beginning before my research even started. I was looking for field lodging in Snow Camp so I wouldn’t have to commute an hour to the barn every day. There’s a campsite adjacent to the barn that was an ideal place to live for the
summer. My advisor and I went to talk to the owners. The lady who warily greeted us maintained a cold demeanor as we explained our situation. The campground policy was that only five days could be paid for at a time, and she was inflexible with making allowances for me. In fact, she only spoke to my advisor, who is a white woman, and not to me. Her body was angled away from me, as if I barely existed. As a Black woman, I’m used to the constant, subtle racism of being ignored, distrusted, critiqued on my speech and appearance, or held to different standards than my white colleagues.
In a typical office, a microaggression such as this could be reported to human resources. But when the outdoors is your workplace and the people you interact with aren’t colleagues, there’s no HR to enforce a welcoming space. We later learned from my study site manager that her husband was seen shooting at a Bald Eagle and was reported, but never suffered a single consequence. Historically, animals have had more protection than Black people; if the federally protected symbol of America didn’t receive any protection at that location, I wasn’t confident that a young Black woman would. I didn’t feel safe and decided not to stay there.
So now, every day during my field season of late March to late July, I drive past Trump signs and Confederate flags, all in pursuit of understanding why chicks in artificial light end up smaller than chicks in natural conditions. I’ve learned to fill up in Raleigh before my commute. The gas station nearest my field site is always swarming with police cars and distrustful, prying eyes. Having been followed many times by police cars while birding or just enjoying the outdoors, my gut tells me to steer clear of that gas station. “How to safely pump gas without being cuffed or shot” was not a module in my college’s field safety seminar.
I started to feel like the knife in my bra was not enough, so I asked my college for identifying gear. Identifying field gear affiliates students with an organization and indicates that we are doing official research. My advisor made N.C. State
This and opposite page: Scenes from Murry Burgess’ field site, including the Barn Swallows, a rat snake, and her dog, Loki.
car magnets for me, and the department is now working on developing more gear, like vests and hats, for all students in the field. Other important conversations with my department included making sure someone knew when I was at the barn and when I made it home; an arsenal of emergency contacts; and discussing interpersonal safety concerns and brainstorming solutions to them.
As part of my experiment, I occasionally need to go out at night to measure the intensity of the artificial light and see if the timers are working properly. I make sure to alert the property owner that I’ll be there, but I’ve found that having company at the barn greatly eases my hypervigilance. Because of COVID-19 regulations, I was unable to have undergraduate field technicians in my first year, but I always bring a friend on these midnight adventures, and we look out for each other. We try to be in and out as quickly as possible.
Besides an incident where the ladder fell out from underneath me on a muddy day, I count myself lucky to never have been injured or harassed at the barn. But one time, an unknown camper brought his truck to halt just outside the barn and began to approach me. I can’t say if it was the car magnets, the pitbull with his hackles raised, or hearing me speak to an audience on Instagram Live that stopped him, but something made him decide to mind his own business that day. I have no way of knowing that man’s intentions, but these appropriate safety precautions have the potential to save lives.
With two field seasons complete and my third coming up, I’ve become acutely aware of the lack of protective measures for researchers like me in institutions across America. I’ve heard too many stories of female researchers being harassed and minority researchers having the police called on them. Safety concerns can be a barrier to others entering the field, especially those who have been historically excluded from natural science professions. Without self-advocacy, many of us might not receive the security we deserve.
As I walked that snake away from the barn, I was annoyed that it ate the Barn Swallow chicks, but I was mostly excited to have a beautiful rat snake wrapped around my arm. I admired its smooth, black scales and needle-like teeth. I could even appreciate the cloying scent of its odor defense, simply because it was an experience with nature.
As a field researcher, I anticipate snakes, wasps, and ticks. But as a Black woman often working alone, the scariest thing I encounter in the field is other people.
What The Moon Knows
by PAT RIVIERE-SEEL
She knows shadow, how to slip behind clouds. She’s perfected the art of disappearing. She knows how to empty herself into the sky, whisper light into darkness. She knows the power of silence, how to keep secrets, even as men leave footprints in the dust, try to claim her. Waxing and waning, she summons the tides. Whole and holy symbol, she remains perfect truth, tranquility. Friend and muse, she knows the hearts of lovers and lunatics. She knows she is not the only one that fills the sky, but the sky is her only home.
illustration by LIDIA CHURAKOVA
Landscape architect Walt Havener designs exquisite, sustainable spaces across the Southeast
PLACEMAKING
by J. MICHAEL WELTON
Scott Francis
Cantor Rodin Court at the NCMA One of the North Carolina Museum of Art’s most sensuous works won’t be found in its galleries, or even inside the Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park. In fact, it’s not even part of the collection, but placemaking at its most exquisite — a sumptuous experience for four of the five human senses. (If a catered moonlight dinner could be arranged, the fifth could be quenched as well.) Outside of the West Building, within a rectangular notch carved into the western edge, porous gravel bound with epoxy glue crunches quietly underfoot. Water murmurs as it drains into the center of a shallow pond, its base tinted black, its edges softened by gray, rounded river rock. On warm days, crepe myrtles rustle in the breeze, while dragonflies buzz by in flight. The scents of roses — and of water lilies, aligned in two parallel rows of 10 at the pond’s center — waft through the air. A large, black-tinted wall, crafted from board-formed concrete, stands at the end of the courtyard, mute and powerful. When its forms were set, concrete was poured from above in uneven layers, with sand dribbled along their edges. After the forms were stripped, the sand was washed away, leaving behind textured cavities begging fingers to run through them. The wall is the exact width of the glassed-in interior gallery it faces, 150 feet away, and quietly serves as a terminus for both indoor and outdoor spaces. “It has great restraint,” says Mark Hough, Duke University’s landscape architect. “The wall is great, but intentionally subtle.” This courtyard, known as the Cantor Rodin Court, is the creation of landscape architect Walt Havener, founding principal and design director at Surface 678 in Durham. It’s one of five such spaces he designed for the West Building, and one of three with water features. A reductive landscape architect, Havener understood that this outdoor gallery should defer to the artwork
Above: The entrance to the NCMA’s West Building. Opposite: The Cantor Rodin Court.
inside, but still make its own understated presence known. Here, guests find six life-sized or larger-than-life bronze sculptures by renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin, including The Three Shades, a study for his masterwork, The Gates of Hell. “It’s the highlight of my career,” Havener says of the Cantor Rodin Court, as well as the landscape he designed to flow around the West Building. “It’s beautiful and simple, and a joy for me.” In 2010 he was tasked with designing five courtyards to complement the new West Building, designed by architect Thomas Phifer, as well as uniting this structure with Edward Durell Stone’s 1983 East Building. To do that, he created a plaza shared by pedestrians and vehicles between the two structures. There are no cues for cars — no curbs, signs, or markings — giving drivers the sense they can operate with impunity in the plaza. Instead, Havener added a grassy, oval-shaped island in its center, offering a subtle clue to rotate around it. “Most people intuitively understand and travel counterclockwise, but some go clockwise,” he says. “To me that means it’s working well.” He was asked also to create the environment that would envelop the West Building — and 11 years later it does, just as its architect envisioned. “Phifer wanted the building to eventually disappear into the landscape,” says Dan Gottlieb, NCMA’s former director of planning and special projects. “And on a cloudy day, it really does that — it dissolves into the landscape that Walt designed around it. It’s an antiheroic attitude.” Havener employed modern rigor at the museum’s entrance, a grid of trees shading visitors who sit, talk, drink, and eat at café tables below. At the edge of this formal space and beyond, an undulating natural landscape hides views of Blue Ridge Road, connects to the larger park around it, and introduces plantings from across the state. “To make it his own, he took it from a highly geometric approach that morphs the building’s grid, to courtyards and grassy hillocks designed with commissioned sculptures,” Gottlieb says. Havener’s crowning achievement on the grounds is actually invisible to museum guests: a stormwater mitigation system for the West Building’s 50-acre watershed. He sank a 90,000-gallon cistern underground on the building’s north side to store runoff for irrigating trees and plantings. But its overflow feeds into a redesigned pond 1,500 feet away, where water is cleaned before draining into House Creek below. It’s a nature lover’s retreat. “The pond was originally designed as flooding control, and we improved
Art Howard (WALKWAY, WALL); Scott Francis (HAVENER) Above: Another view of the West Building; Walt Havener. Opposite: A path outside of the NCMA.
upon that greatly, and vastly improved water quality,” Havener says, crediting Steven Blake and the Denver-based environmental firm Artifex-ED for their work there. “In all it was a huge success for quantity and quality, but more importantly for the integration of people into the system.” In 2017, the entire project won the American Society of Landscape Architects Professional Honor Award, the most prestigious of its kind. It was selected from 465 submissions in the U.S. and around the world. Tellingly, Havener made no mention of the award in interviews for this story. “He’s a talented designer, but he’s humble,” says Paul Manning, Duke University’s director of project management. “His head never gets as big as it does with some talented designers — that’s who he is, and that’s his character.” Havener got his start working for a landscaping firm in high school, then attended North Carolina State University to learn horticulture. There, he discovered a talent for design. Before he graduated in 1983, he was called into a meeting that included the head of the landscape architecture department. “Three professors dragged me into an office and said, You’re going to apply for the master of landscape architecture programs at Harvard, UVA, and Michigan,” he says. And to his surprise, “I was accepted at all three.” He chose the department of landscape architecture at Harvard University, which at the time was chaired by the legendary Laurie Olin. “It was just a great school,” Havener says. “There was an urban atmosphere, and I had the ability to go to lectures in a wide variety of disciplines, and with future world leaders.” Once he graduated, Havener came back to the Triangle, working from 1991 to 1993 with O’Brien Atkins Associates in Durham, then teaming up with Bob Lappas to form Lappas + Havener. By 2013, he’d bought Lappas out and formed Surface 678. It’s now a highly respected regional firm with 27 employees. Its name makes symbolic sense. “Surface is the medium we work on,” Havener says. “And 6, 7, and 8 are the zones from North Carolina to Texas — hot and cold, with warm nights.” Today, the firm works on projects in North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. “Half of our work is in North Carolina and the other half is in the Southeast,” he says. “We’ve worked with almost all the architects of merit in this state — they’ve heard about our approach, and they like the collaborative process.” Michael Stevenson, partner at Perkins Eastman’s Raleigh studio, is one of them. “I’ve worked in New York and D.C. and collaborated with many
Above and opposite: Areas within North Carolina State University’s Centennial Campus.
national firms, but I’ve always believed Walt and his firm are the equals of that,” he says. “It’s a national design firm that happens to be in Durham.” Surface 678’s newest project graces Havener’s alma mater, on the Centennial Campus at N.C. State. It’s a sophisticated stormwater management system for the Clark Nexsen-designed engineering building, Fitts-Woolard Hall. The project — a series of riffles, step pools, and stainless steel weir — runs the length of the building, 300 feet in total. It’s 30 feet wide, including seating and landscaping for students, and 5 feet deep, including surface and subsurface features. Stormwater from the roof of the building enters the first of a series of step pools at its top, at an elevation of 366 feet. It emerges at the bottom, after an 11-foot drop, at 355 feet. Here, the landscape architects have recreated the dynamics of a North Carolina trout stream. Each level has a riffle and pool: the riffle transports water downgrade, and the pool allows for collection and infiltration into deep media beds below the surface. “Step pools are really pockets of bioretention,” Havener says. “The weir, or sluice, is a demonstration of how water travels quickly when unopposed by nature, versus traveling through natural elements like soil, stone, and plants.” Its material palette includes boulders from the North Carolina/Tennessee border, valued for their orange-browncream coloration. Blocky shapes and flat tops allowed for stacking and fitting. Smaller stones from Virginia, called river jacks, occupy the riffles where water rapidly descends into pools. “They were selected for their color range and the rounded language of mountain streams,” Havener says. Plantings are native to North Carolina. “We try and select materials that will remain low, so the stream doesn’t grow over with foliage,” he says. “There are grasses, perennials, and sedges, with low shrubs and few trees.” As at the museum, the firm created a uniting space between the engineering building and its neighbor, the James Hunt Library. The buildings share a grand staircase, part of a key campus path. Havener and his designers selected materials and made alignments to subtly reference the library. “We pretty much redesigned from the west side of Hunt to the east, and the oval to the north is a unifying campus space,” he says. “We carefully managed alignments with the perimeter path and a tree-planting master plan that the University authored.” At the end of the day, the project is thoughtful, sustainable, and designed within an inch of its life — not that the lay passerby would notice. That’s Havener’s gift: creating outdoor spaces that are at once utilitarian, unobtrusive, and uplifting, an unexpected gift to the senses.
Replicas of Sir Walter Raleigh’s wax seals from Terry Henderson’s collection.
signed & sealed
Terry Henderson’s unique collection bridges history and design
by KATHERINE SNOW SMITH photography by BRYAN REGAN
Terry Henderson, above, has an extensive collection of wax seals, medals, intaglios, and other memorabilia collected over the years.
“They say if you have three of anything it’s a collection,” Terry Henderson says with a chuckle. “So I guess I qualify as a collector.” The laugh contradicts the breadth of what he’s gathered: a distinctive assemblage of over 400 intricately carved silver and metal seals and wax impressions, called intaglios, from the 18th and 19th centuries. The intaglios range in size from a half-inch to 1 ½ inches — each a miniature work of art — and made from an intricately carved seal or stamp. “There are faces, mythical figures, and all manner of classical Greek and Roman designs,” he says. Prized within this collection are three rare replicas of Sir Walter Raleigh’s seals. When you see them, you can just picture him in London in 1592, holding a flame to a stick of wax, dripping a small red puddle onto the envelope containing a newly penned letter to his secret wife, Elizabeth Throckmorton. Picking up the ornately cut metal seal, he’d press it into the wax to safeguard his words from prying eyes. “As a native of North Carolina and because of the place that Sir Walter Raleigh holds in the history of the state, I thought they were very interesting,” Henderson says. “And, of course, Hayes Barton, where I live, is named for Raleigh’s birthplace in Devon, England.” Sir Walter Raleigh used different seals for various roles in his life: Governor of Virginia (though, just like the city named after him, he never set foot there), Warden of the Stannaries, Governor of the Island of Jersey, and Captain of the Queen’s Guard. He also had a personal seal. In his era, wax seals were used to designate official documents as well as to secure letters, writing tablets, boxes, and even doors. The original seals used to make the wax impressions were often crafted out of precious and semiprecious gemstones and used in signet rings or pendants. The concave image was cut into the stone like a mold. The gemstones were so hard
that normal engraving tools could not be used, so the cuts were made by lathes powered with a bow or foot pedal, Henderson explains. The concave (negative) carving would be pressed into a red wax sulphur mixture rendering a convex (positive) image. Sometimes the intaglios would be made of white paste instead of red wax.
The resulting hardened intaglios were often collected by sons of wealthy families as they completed their education. They’d use them to commemorate the various stops on months-long, sometimes years-long, grand tours of the capitals and ancient sites of Greek and Roman civilizations. These collections of intaglios were often cataloged in books created especially for their display. “The classics and the arts come together in these small treasures,” he says. “I would come across them for sale on eBay, from other collectors or from antique dealers. You’d see them individually or two or three together at a time.”
The British Museum made just 100 copies of three of Sir Walter Raleigh’s 16th-century seals in the late 19th century. The museum then sold the seals to raise money to buy back the original seals from collectors, who had acquired them through an earlier auction. Over the decades, they’ve continued to be a collector’s item.
Early on, Henderson developed a fascination with history and an eye for spotting rare medals, seals, and intaglios. He actually found one of his most prized pieces as a teenager at an antique store in his hometown of Hickory, in the western part of the state.
“I call it my Queen Vicky medal,” he says. The commemorative 3-inch medallion was made and sold for the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Victoria’s 60 years on the throne in 1897. At the time, she was the longest-reigning British monarch. The solid silver medallion is a triumph of the medallic arts, featuring the queen’s profile on one side and, on the other, the Royal Coat of Arms centered in the midst of all the flags of the the British Empire at the time.
“I probably paid less than $100 for it,” Henderson says. “But that was an incredible amount of money for me as a teenager in the 1960s.”
About 20 years later, Henderson and his wife were at a shop in Mount Vernon, Virginia, the homeplace of George Washington, where he came across another favorite find: a replica of the Great Seal of the United States reproduced from a seal that Washington had owned. These replicas were produced in the late 1860s as a way for the Mount Vernon Ladies Association to raise money to buy the privately-owned Mount Vernon estate from Washington’s heirs. (It worked: they bought it back for $200,000, a considerable sum at the time.) Their fundraising efforts allowed Mount Vernon to become the first organized house museum in the country.
Henderson, who moved to Raleigh in 1987, recently headed up the centennial celebration for his neighborhood of Hayes Barton. In a full-circle moment, he commissioned a new seal from Raleigh Notary Seals for the occasion, depicting the one-time trolley stop at the corner of Harvey Street and Glenwood Avenue. It was embossed in gold foil on commemorative programs for the event — a modern take on the historic wax seals that captured his interest decades ago.
A few more items from Henderson’s collection, including his ”Queen Vicky” commemorative medallion and dozens of red wax intaglios.
FRESHLY FALLEN
The blossoms of the Yoshino Cherry (Prunus x yedoensis ‘Akebono’) are fleeting, but the petals they drop make our footsteps soft after a winter of hard edges.
SPRING Scenes of
The Sarah P. Duke Gardens brim with the beauty of a hopeful season
by HANNAH ROSS photography by JULI LEONARD
Each March, a tunnel of Akebono Yoshino cherry trees comes into bloom at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham, their blushtoned blossoms unfurling. As the flowers peak, their pale pink petals catch the breeze and twirl to the ground. Jan Little, the garden’s director of education and public programs, welcomes the jubilant embrace of the cherry trees. “They’re planted in such a way that it’s a celebration. In Japan, they celebrate not only the blossoms in the trees, but the blossoms that fall on the ground, and that’s so nicely illustrated in the allée,” she says, referring to the pathway under the trees. In the gardens, spring is orchestrated long before the flowers emerge. A skilled team of horticulturists juggle seasonal tasks year-round, planning for spring in the heat of summer. Each fall, tens of thousands of bulbs are planted. Horticulture director Bobby Mottern thrives in this verdant cycle. He leads a creative team of gardeners who manifest continual magic for visitors. “We shape pockets of opportunity and experiences throughout the garden,”
Mottern says. “We want to see the dreams of the garden staff come to life.” Designed with such generosity of spirit, the gardens hold endless opportunities for discovery, reflection, and inspiration. In the Woodland Garden, the ephemerals emerge, including bloodroot, Virginia bluebell, and trillium, popping through the leaf litter to capture brief sunlight before the tree canopy returns. The historic Terrace Gardens are bathed in sunshine, with Italianate stone beds full of structural, evergreen texture. Tucked throughout to delight spring visitors are about 60,000 bulbs, including daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, and grape hyacinth. Inspired by a trip to Keukenhof Gardens in the Netherlands, Mottern and his team now plant their bulbs in layers, with large bulbs buried under smaller ones, to create waves of blooms for months. Planting this way is a significant undertaking, but, Mottern says, “creating complexity makes it dynamic.” Along with bulbs, hardy annuals like poppies and snapdragons are tucked throughout, bringing a sense of renewal to every corner. Nearby, in the Asiatic Arboretum, some of Mottern’s favorite spring moments take place: the synchronous blossoming of the saucer magnolias, and the emergence of Japanese Maple leaves, which gleam like jewels at this tender stage. “Most people focus on flowers,” he says, “but I love the leaves of spring — all those vibrant shades of green.” To notice nature’s nuances as horticulturists do takes finely tuned attention. In her education role, Little helps visitors experience the gardens with a fresh perspective.
She encourages tapping into the senses — matching colors, mapping sounds, or following fragrances where they lead — to unveil the evolving beauty of the gardens. “Instead of plants just being a backdrop,” Little says, “you’re actively seeing the garden, which makes your experience richer.”
TEXTURED TERRACES
Tens of thousands of bulbs awaken in the Terrace Garden alongside romantic weeping cherry trees (Prunus pendula ‘Pendula Plena Rosea’). Stately conifers, bristled pines, and angular agaves embrace spring’s softness within their architectural lines.
POPS OF COLOR
Bulbs and hardy annuals are planted throughout the gardens in late fall. Come spring, they paint the landscape with their rich hues, beckoning us closer. Clockwise from top left: Grape Hyacinth (Muscari aucheri ‘Blue Magic’); Iceland Poppy (Papaver nudicaule); Poppy anemone (Anemone coronaria); and tulip (Tulipa sp.).
UNFURLING FORMS
The gardens in spring rouse our senses with their texture, light, and fragrance. Clockwise from top left: Bud of Iceland poppy (Papaver nudicaule); Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum); Fatsi (Fatsia japonica); and Weeping Higan Cherry (Prunus pendula ‘Pendula Plena Rosea’).
MORNING DEW
Catch the gardens in the morning for glimpses of rebirth reflected in a thousand dewdrops. Clockwise from top left: tulip (Tulipa sp.); daffodil (Narcissus spp.); snowdrop (Leucojum aestivum); daffodil buds (Narcissus spp.)
Nate Sheaffer reflects on a career of illumination
by COLONY LITTLE photography by EAMON QUEENEY
“I think we are hardwired to be drawn to light,” says Nate Sheaffer. “Neon is a brilliant and uplifting visual.” He should know: he’s a longtime neon artist and glass bender who’s perfected his craft for over 36 years in North Carolina. If you see a glowing sign luring your gaze toward a storefront in Raleigh, chances are it was created in his studio, Glas Neon. From the bright red “Raleigh” sign inside Union Station to the triptych of positivity prompts (What Good Shall I Do Today?) at CAM Raleigh to the shiny new green sign in the window of Parkside Grill, Sheaffer and his Glas team have made public art their business. “As a shop of craftspeople, we get to imbue some artistic leverage into the commercial signs we make,” he says.
The Glas Neon studio at Dock 1053 on Whitaker Road — which calls itself “a shiny place for shady people” — is a dazzling wonderland filled with whimsical vintage signs, glimmering disco balls, campy cartoon characters, magical marquees, and bespoke custom commissions infused with artistry and whimsy. A portion of the studio is open to visitors who can observe the process in action through a window — a safe way to get a glimpse of the artists at their workbenches, bending glass with torches.
Working in neon combines art and science to create lightning in a bottle. The process begins with a design drawn to scale on paper and used as a pattern for “bending” a glass tube. While heating the tube over a high flame, the artist maintains a consistent diameter by blowing puffs of air into the glass. Once the desired shape is achieved, the bending is complete. The Glas Neon team uses various colors of glass, and some tubes are coated with phosphor or other chemicals to generate different hues.
Next, gas is introduced into the glass tube — neon, historically, but other inert gases, too, like argon, helium, or mercury, or a mix that will glow when activated. The gas is sealed inside the tubes, which have electrodes attached to each end. When power is sent to the electrodes, it ionizes the gas inside the tube and activates the light. The combination of the tube color, phosphor lining, and gas used influences the color of the finished product. It’s a delicate, technical process, with brilliant results. Sheaffer relishes neon’s ability to spark curiosity and wonder: “I really want everybody who looks at something that I’ve had a hand in the design to say, How did he do that? and then to immediately ask, Why?”
Sheaffer attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1980s, earning a degree in German while also studying art and sculpture. As a student, Sheaffer was encouraged to incorporate light into his studio practice. That led to an independent study under neon artist John Noe, which then led to work with John Wilhelm, who was then the owner of Paradise Neon in Raleigh. Wilhelm tutored Sheaffer in neon art and mentored him on the business side of neon-tubing fabrication. After Sheaffer graduated, Wilhelm (who had recently sold his own business) encouraged his protégé to start his own shop. In 1986, Sheaffer opened Neon Impressions in Chapel Hill, fabricating glass tubing for commercial businesses with his brothers Curtis and Garth as partners and employees.
While commercial signage work paid the bills during Neon Impressions’ early years, Sheaffer realized that in order to push the business into a more artistic direction, he would need stronger glass-blowing skills. “I felt like I needed to have a grip on the craft to adequately start being more quirky on projects,” he says. “I accelerated the process by working 16-hour days, by myself, practicing for two years.”
By the late 1990s, neon glass operations in the U.S. faced stiff competition from global fabricators and technological advances in LED lighting. Neon Impressions shut down as the industry suffered tremendous losses. “Over 2,000 neon glass blowers pretty much stopped working, period, in 1999,” says Sheaffer. “And that was out of a pool of about 3,500. Only about 350 exist now.” Sheaffer himself stepped away from the business for a while, first working in general contracting, then staying at home to parent his two young children. But as they got older, the lure of the light returned. He joined the Chatham Artists Guild in 2011 to start rehoning his craft,
— Nate Sheaffer
Scenes from inside the Glas Neon studio, where Nate Sheaffer and his team fabricate signs and other artwork.
Sheaffer at work in the Glas studio bending a tube of glass.
then founded Glas Neon in 2016; he now employs five people at the Raleigh studio. When Sheaffer opened Glas, the lingering effects of global competition and technical advances remained. Still, the studio was doing well — until a 2020 expansion to a second studio in New Orleans, coupled with the pandemic, put the business in a precarious position. By last year, it was almost lights out for Glas. Sheaffer realized that if he let his staff go, the chances of them returning were slim. So he took a significant financial gamble to keep his staff employed by borrowing from his retirement savings. “If I lost my glass blowers, I wouldn’t get them back — they would go find someplace else and I wouldn’t blame them,” he says. “We did a lot of ‘make work’ restoring old signs. I paid everybody by borrowing from future Nate, who will not return my calls at all [laughs]. My sad story would be less sad if it weren’t everybody’s story.” But a holiday miracle pulled Glas Neon out of the dark: last December, WRAL and Dorothea Dix Park commissioned Glas to create neon sculptures for the second annual Nights of Lights drive- through light show. The project was the boost the team needed. The Glas team created over 35 large-scale works for the festival, including a series of neon elves and a 23-foot mechanical Santa Claus. In addition to its commercial work, the studio has had a hand in artistic commissions like the Love Over Rules installation at Father & Son Antiques. Marjorie Hodges from Artsuite commissioned Glas to fabricate and install work originally designed by artist Hank Willis Thomas. “That was such a timely thing to happen for everyone,” says Sheaffer. “It was a technical challenge, the whole crew worked together as a shop effort — it was really gratifying and the message is so good.” This was the second large-scale commission for which Hodges had hired Sheaffer, the first being a piece called Eyecentennial in the North Hills ArtBox public art project. “Nate is so talented, he really stretches the bounds of using neon to create complex, colorful, and engaging works of art,” says Hodges. The craftspeople at Glas are also encouraged to hone their own creative practices. Tayler Drattlo, a neon artist who’s worked at the Glas studio for two years, reflects on how color in neon plays with our perception. “As I have explored and experimented in my neon practice, I’ve noticed my tendency toward the neon glow itself and its participation in space,” she says. “The delicate art of bending soft glass mixed with the endless possibilities of gas to glass color combinations draws me in. I’ll need at least one more lifetime to explore all the possibilities of the shape and flow of the visual candy that is neon.” That creativity speaks to the environment of collaboration and mentorship at Glas, which, in addition to nurturing the folks in its studio, holds glass-bending classes to preserve the distinctive craft. “He’s the hardest-working person I’ve ever met and has always been open to sharing his experience and knowledge with others,” says Richard Marvill, a glass bender at Glas Neon who has known Sheaffer since they were students together at UNC. “He’s also an energetic champion of what we do — he definitely inspires those around him to give a little more.” Sheaffer recognizes that part of the lure of neon is nostalgia, but believes that, with creativity and craft, it can play a crucial role in shaping the visual landscape of an evolving Raleigh. “I’d like to think that when we do something right, that has a decent design, the light alone will draw people,” says Sheaffer. “And if it’s clever, then maybe it will make somebody smile.”
