NeON2 explores bright light art at Delta

STOCKTON — Sometimes, artists go beyond paint, ink, clay and marble to more exotic artistic tools — like neon lights.

The L.H. Horton Jr. Gallery presents “NeON2,” an art show shining a spotlight on neon.

The show is guest curated by Ruth Santee, co-director of Oakland’s Transmission Gallery.

Transmission Gallery is a contemporary gallery that promotes primarily regional and national figurative artists with an emphasis on Expressionism, California Funk and socially engaged art.

Santee is also an artist and professor at San Joaquin Delta College, where she teaches printmaking and 2-D color and design. Her work has been exhibited in museums, nonprofit venues and galleries, and she holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute.

In 2016, Transmission Gallery presented an invitational exhibition of neon art with four of the five artists’ work showing in NeON2 — Bill Concannon, Roger Daniells, Shawna Peterson and Bruce Suba. Linda Sue Price has joined Transmission Gallery this year.

These artists work in the realm of physics and alchemy, harnessing neon, argon and sometimes krypton in colorful display and controlled light.

As veterans of working with these noble gasses, often in the commercial world, they’ve taken the opportunity to play with glass, chemical elements, power sources and other materials to execute their own creative visions.

The show will be at the L.H. Horton Jr. Gallery until Oct. 27. A special reception is planned for opening night, with a special dance performance by Delta College and the YAMECI Dance Company, directed by Valerie Gnassounou-Bynoe. Dancers will move like kinetic sculpture, adorned with neoncolored body paint.