Today's eye-opener is more abstract than a short doc about Willis Winters. Instead, it's a virtual sculpture by noted neon-sign collector, Dan Holzschuh, who counts among his collection's pieces remnants from the old Prince of Hamburgers, the Circle Inn, the Gemini Drive-In and even Jack Ruby's Carousel Club. He appeared in this 2006 Atlantic Monthly story about how neon signs have morphed from "marketing tool to tacky trash to folk art," and for the last 21 years his Landmark Sign Company has been illuminating the tops and fronts of myriad familiar local businesses.
Says his bio, Holzschuh "is currently in the process of developing an installation of public art for the City of Dallas composed of historic signs from around the city." Which brings me to this discovery: "The Sign Tree," subtitled "a famous sculpture yet to be created." On Vimeo, filmmaker Andrew Holzschuh, an Art Institute of Dallas student and Dan's son, describes the video thusly:
these are all panels from historic porcelain and neon signs from Dallas. we took pictures of all the signs from above to make the dimensions all match. then the pictures were taken into photoshop and individually cut out. animation was done in after effects using 3D space. this is the first visual example of what we are trying to do with the signs. the sculpture would actually have neon on all of the panels, which would be put back into their original form.A start, sure, but it also goes quite well with Radiohead.