City Light
Three Seattle neon signs, painted in acrylic on large canvas: the Pink Elephant Super Car Wash, the Seattle City Light depot in Georgetown, and the Lost Lake Cafe & Lounge.
01 The Exhibition
Three signs, three paintings.
City Light was the inaugural show at Ground Floor Studio, a year-long residency on the ground floor of an Amazon building in South Lake Union. Across the plaza, at 7th and Blanchard, Amazon had reinstalled the Elephant Super Car Wash sign in December 2022, blocks from its original location at 6th and Denny. The sign had been there since 1956; the car wash itself closed in 2020 after sixty-four years.
The exhibition consisted of three paintings of three Seattle neon signs: the Pink Elephant, the CITY LIGHT neon on top of the Seattle City Light depot in Georgetown, and the Lost Lake Cafe & Lounge on Capitol Hill. All acrylic on large canvas. The aim was to render each sign carefully enough that the source was unmistakable, then push the colour past what neon can actually do.
Joshua Borsman painted the show with Jacqueline Goldberg as special guest. Goldberg is a designer, artist, and long-time Amazon employee, and an exceptional colourist. The palette across all three paintings owes a great deal to her eye.
02 Painting
The Pink Elephant.
The sign that stood at 6th and Denny Way from 1956 to 2020.
The painting starts as an outline drawn straight onto the canvas. The silhouette is the same one that stood at 6th Avenue and Denny Way from 1956 until the car wash closed in 2020. Seattle neon artist Beatrice “Bea” Haverfield designed the original: 380 blinking tubes, with four small elephants at the base, one for each of her children.
The big rotating Pink Elephant now lives at MOHAI. The companion reader-board, which is the one painted here, hangs at 7th and Blanchard, right outside the studio.
03 Painting
CAR WASH.
The letterforms had to be drawn before the colour could go in.
The CAR WASH panel started with chalked letterforms drawn freehand on raw canvas. The lettering was sized and resized until it held its scale next to the elephant. Once it landed, colour went in.
The canvas was left to read as the brightest part of each letter. Pinks built outward from there; darker reds and magentas pulled the lettering off the background.
04 Painting
CITY LIGHT.
The exhibition's name comes from the Seattle City Light depot sign in Georgetown.
The name has two readings: a generic phrase about urban neon, and the actual name of Seattle's public utility. The source sign sits on top of the Seattle City Light maintenance depot on Airport Way South. The depot is a working facility; bucket trucks park in the bays underneath the sign.
The title piece for the exhibition was painted across two panels and installed to flank the gallery entry. Lettering is pink neon on deep navy ground, sized so the type itself becomes the room.
05 Painting
Lost Lake Cafe & Lounge.
A 24-hour Capitol Hill diner. The OPEN / HOURS panel is mostly decorative at this point.
One panel for Lost Lake. The script lettering is rendered in cream and gold against a teal field, with the OPEN / HOURS sub-panel painted in below as it appears on the real sign.
06 Studio
The room and the palette.
Five thousand square feet of concrete and glass on the ground floor of an Amazon building, opened as a year-long artist's residency in 2023.
Neon is a narrow band of colour; acrylic is wide open. The first weeks of the residency were mostly spent finding the bridge between them. Paint after paint, plate after plate, until the pinks, reds, teals, and golds sat right next to each other.
Through the working months, the floor stayed covered, the palettes stayed wet, and the canvases grew across both.
07 Installed · Opening
Install and opening.
Pink Elephant on the gantry, Lost Lake on the floor, CITY at the right, the South Lake Union plaza outside the glass.
On the plaza outside, the gallery threw pink and red light into the night. The Pink Elephant was visible through the glass; the CITY LIGHT marquee was lit overhead. The whole front of the building read as one large sign for the exhibition.
The marquee was a fabricated red neon CITY LIGHT, installed above the entry for the run of the show.
08 Editioned
Holographic decals.
Holographic CAR WASH stickers given to visitors at the opening.
09 Artists
The artists.
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Joshua Borsman
Artist · organiser
Seattle-based artist and engineer. Works across sculpture, sound, and kinetic media, staged in galleries, gardens, sidewalks, and orbit. City Light was the inaugural show of his year-long residency at Ground Floor Studio.
joshuaborsman.com → -
Jacqueline Goldberg Special Guest
Designer · artist · long-time Amazon employee
Designer, artist, and long-time Amazon employee. Her painting and drawing practice includes cityscape, figure work, and ongoing work along the L.A. River. She joined City Light as special guest and was central to the colour decisions across all three paintings.
jgoldberg.studio →