Yakima neon artist one of few in state

Jeff Boyle was just a kid when his parents, Frank and Vi Boyle, welcomed a traveling neon craftsman to Yakima. His dad was in the sign business and the man was looking for jobs.

This was 1964, when the demand for elaborate neon signs was waning. But sign businesses in Yakima were going strong and the Yakima Valley was known for its memorable neon signs. The neon artist stayed with the Boyle family for a few days and made a small holiday-themed sign as a thank-you for their hospitality.

It’s simple, with the words “Seasons Greetings.” His family put it in a big window every Christmas, something Jeff Boyle and his wife, Anola, continue to do.

“I was always interested in neon,” he said. “I remember in the early ‘60s, Valley Neon was just right off Yakima Avenue,” he said. In particular, Boyle remembers the big neon Santa that went up on the roof of its building every year.

Boyle is 66. He could retire any time, though he plans to keep working for now. As one of an estimated dozen or so experienced neon sign builders (and fixers) in Washington state, Boyle keeps busy. Demand for neon signs ebbed about 10 years ago, but they have since recaptured the public imagination thanks to their unique attributes, colorful artistry and the enduring nostalgia they inspire.

“There’s no other colors like it. It’s so vibrant,” Boyle said. “There’s just something about it.”

Neon signs are designed to attract customers to businesses. But they’re also beloved landmarks, reminding people of good times at favorite places, of great vacations and popular hometown hangouts.

Yakima is still home to neon landmarks such as the tireless washerwoman on Fruitvale Boulevard, Gus the hunter aiming from his neon paradise at the Sports Center, and the palm tree and tiki torch of the Bali-Hai Motel on North First Street.

More than two dozen historic signs fill the neon garden of the Yakima Valley Museum, with several more in storage, awaiting restoration.

“Yakima has always had a pool of talented people who worked in signs here,” Boyle said. “I’d love to know who had the first neon sign here, and when.”

Inside the shop

Boyle owns Boyle Brothers Wholesale Neon. He opened the shop in 2000 with brother Brad, who is no longer affiliated with the business, and moved into the current location in 2002.

The business occupies the back section of SignWorks Custom Concepts at 915 W. Yakima Ave. Jeff Boyle and SignWorks owners John and Kim Thompson are longtime friends and co-own the building, which originally was a Mobil gas station.

A door on the building’s west side, capped by a small black canopy, is the public entrance to the neon sign business. Boyle usually leaves the door open on nice days, and passersby may see him working with a variety of natural gas-fueled industrial burners as he heats and bends sections of clear glass tubes.

Along with his electric bike, tools of his trade and hints of his love for midcentury design, Boyle’s fascinating workspace is home to some vintage and newer signs. The smaller ones, such as the flashing Bud sign and a few original designs, are his. Others, like a big restaurant sign that graced a business in Easton, belong to private collectors and need some work.

Made right, neon signs can last a long time, Boyle said. “You’ll probably break it before it burns out,” he said.

People come to Boyle with big and small repair and maintenance jobs, many referred to him from sign companies. He also gets some work from the Tube Art Group (TAG) sign company, which is based in Bellevue with offices in Portland and a manufacturing plant in Yakima. The tube art reference is a nod to neon, Boyle said.

“They’ve been around a long time,” Boyle said. “They do all their manufacturing here.”

Some customers just walk in, like the woman who recently brought in a smaller Pepsi sign. Unfortunately it was beyond repair, Boyle said.

Getting into the business

Like others in his specialized craft, Boyle may alternately refer to himself as a neon glass bender, tube bender or a glass bender. He graduated from Carroll High School in Yakima in 1974 and started his sign career with the Heath Sign Co. in 1981. His brother Brad and John Thompson also worked at Heath.

“We learned enough from these sign companies that we could go out on our own,” he said.

For his first five years at Heath, Jeff Boyle assembled signs. He got to know Phil Salzman, who had worked at Valley Neon in the 1950s and was at Valley Neon when his dad started there in 1962 as a salesman, Jeff Boyle said. His dad started with Valley Neon in 1962 as a salesman.

“When I started doing this, there were still guys who made signs like this,” he said, pointing to a massive vintage sign he is restoring. “These signs are from a different world.”

Salzman attended a famous neon school in New York, Boyle said. He let Boyle observe and left his equipment on so Boyle could hang around after work and practice what he was learning.

“Basically it was just spending a lot of time around the glass and fires. I just kind of stuck with it,” he said. “It just came naturally after a few months of spending time after work goofing around with it.”

Along with knowing exactly how to precisely bend slender glass tubes using a variety of burners, Boyle knows about the electricity needed to power neon signs, the different noble gases that fill the tubes such as neon and argon, along with the mixtures of gases and the powders and coatings that create the different colors of neon signs.

Neon signs begin with the customer and the salesman. After learning what the customer wants, the salesperson talks to the artist, who creates designs for the clients. Once a design is approved, it moves on to metal fabricators, painters and guys like Boyle.

“I can do basic design, but I’m not an artist,” said Boyle, who works off patterns. “They’ll send me a design and I turn that into a neon pattern and plot it out.”

Past and future of neon

Georges Claude, a French chemical engineer, is credited with being the father of neon advertising. In 1910, after years of experiments that began with finding cheap methods of producing high-quality oxygen, Claude exhibited a sign that used neon gas at the Grand Palais in Paris. Claude had discovered that passing high-voltage electricity through a tube filled with one of the noble gases caused it to glow.

By 1913, neon signs started popping up in France, and neon was introduced to the United States in 1923, according to the book “Let There Be Neon” by Rudi Stern. Neon signs were the rage from the 1930s through the 1950s, with businesses of all sizes using them to stand out from the crowd.

Plastic changed all that. Companies began using plastic reader boards — signs that were lit by fluorescent tubes where workers would arrange plastic letters on white backgrounds, using poles.

“Even in the ‘80s they were trying to figure out ways to get rid of neon,” Boyle said. “Neon always was more fragile.”

The slowest point in in Boyle’s career came about 10 years ago, and he got a part-time job at TAG to supplement his income. “Then things picked up. All of a sudden there was just more neon work,” he said. “There were a lot of custom signs (TAG) was doing for Seattle, Portland.”

He’s still in business because “it’s also just because there’s not many of us doing this anymore. It’s a tough business. I can do other things” such as repairs and service and restoration, Boyle said, along with making the neon for new signs.

More recent examples of Boyle’s work around Yakima include the big neon apples and cherries on the Washington Fruit & Produce Co. warehouses on River Road, the Bob’s Burgers and Brews sign, and neon in the Cyclops Tattoo Studio on Fruitvale. The owner wants another neon sign and will design it, he said.

Boyle has also made neon signage for Fiesta Foods, Mercy Theatres and the Serena Williams building at Nike World Headquarters. He’s working on a big neon sign for the new Northwest Harvest food distribution center, which is under construction at Fruitvale Boulevard and North 20th Avenue.

Social media has helped fuel the resurgence of love for neon, especially photo-driven platforms such as Instagram. Artists such as Eve Hoyt, who shows and writes about her work on the She Bends website, are pushing the medium’s boundaries, physically and visually.

“I know in the future that’s the way of a lot of glass benders will survive — art,” Boyle said.

With plenty of work to keep him busy, Boyle doesn’t expect to retire anytime soon. He and his wife of 41 years, Anola, have three grown children.

“I’m still here. I don’t have any plans for tomorrow, or the next week, but you never know,” he said.

— This story has been updated to correct the ownership of Boyle Brothers Neon and the building that houses Jeff Boyle's shop.