Tools they use

THE PLACE: Lite Brite Neon Studio THE JOB: Building custom neon signs LOCATION: Brooklyn, New York

BUZZING, mesmerising lights colour the old can factory where Lite Brite Neon Studio blurs the lines between art, science and business. Since 1999, the Brooklyn-based collective of artists and technicians shape, form and fill glass tubes into signs that light up museums and holiday windows. Here, SERGIO ALMARAZ, master glass bender, shows us how. 1 / RIBBON-FIRE TORCH Four types of torches heat up the soft sodalime glass. This is a ribbon-firetorch for soft arcs and curves, while artists use a cross-fire torch to make tight bends. A single- or double-pointed hand torch makes glass malleable.

2 / SODA-LIME TUBES The average tubing is about 12 mm wide by 1,5 metres long. Glass is a great insulator; benders could heat one area up to 815 degrees, and 5 centimetres away it’s room temperature.

3 / BLOWING HOSE Heating and bending the glass makes it lose its diameter. To keep the tube from collapsing, they blow into this rubber hose. 4 / BENDING They use their hands. Each bend takes anywhere from two to five minutes to make, plus two to five minutes to cool down. One letter can have a dozen bends in it and take an hour to finish.

THE ELEMENTS / Three factors impact colour: the gas they use, a phosphorous powder coating, and the colour of the glass itself. Neon gas glows a bright, fiery orange-red in clear glass. A lot of the colours you see – yellows, purples, greens, and whites – are from phosphor coatings on the glass interacting with gases. Lite Brite uses neon, argon, krypton, and occasionally xenon and helium.