CULLEN HOUSER
Cullen Houser is an extraordinary neon artist who fearlessly pushes the boundaries of this mesmerizing medium. With an unparalleled artistic vision, he masterfully combines unexpected elements, giving birth to a breathtaking fusion of neon, futurism, and sci-fi horror. Through his captivating creations, Houser transports us to a realm where imagination runs wild and the limits of artistic expression cease to exist.
Alexandra: I really wanted to hear a bit about your process. I’d imagine working with neons, on a technical level, is quite complicated.
Cullen: Yeah! For starters, I’m a graduate student at UW-Madison and I came here for printmaking, and I’m kind of doing anything but printmaking right now. Going into it [with that mindset], a lot of what I do is dissect an image, turning it into different layers that are different processes, so try to think of everything separated... When I came here to UW-Madison and saw they had a neon lab, I was like, I should check it out and see what it’s like, then it was like a type of art making - like drawing with glass and light. It was a really amazing process that you can’t really do in any other medium, it is a very unique thing, so I thought I should capitalize it while I’m here. A lot of it has been experimenting with using neon as a very bright type of drawing. Usually I’ll sketch out a plan… [thinking that] it has to exist on a substrate with some kind of printer information underneath it, and then I was like, it would be cool to have something in front of the neon because the neon on its own is spectacular, but with colored, transparent plexiglass it could mess with the lights… [mixing the colored plexiglass with the lights to make a new color, like mixing the yellows and blues of paint to create green]. All the different color plays became a fun experiment to see how all these materials could interact with each other.
Alexandra: It’s almost a natural way of bringing it back to color theory, the way light interacts with the things around it. That’s really cool! I’ve never thought much of incorporating light into artwork, but its really fascinating, especially when you add in the layering.
Cullen: Yeah! And since I worked in prints, with everything on paper, [the interaction of the colors] is something I kind of understand, but the neons [were] so new to me I wanted to experiment. Like how reflective tape interacted with the light, or vinyl, matte paint versus glossy paint, trying to experiment with different mediums that could play with the light. Or plexiglass with an image printed on it, so there’s moments where the light doesn’t come through as clearly, and the image is being projected.
Alexandra: I’d love to hear a bit about the lab that you work in, I’d imagine the training for using a neon lab is insane.
Cullen: There’s definitely a learning curve… The burners… The temperature… You learn when the glass is at the state when you should bend it. It’s a really cool process, learning to bend the glass and add the electrodes, which are the end caps for the neon which will conduct the electricity to excite the gas on the inside. Learning to take the glass and putting the gas and shocking it - It’s part craft and part using it as this material with so much history. I pull a lot of inspiration from signage. It’s weird because neon is almost a hundred years old, but it still has this mystic and wonder behind it.
Alexandra: Yeah, there is something very captivating about neons! I saw in your artists bio that a lot of your work is about mark making, and using a medium that’s 3D in that way is really interesting.
Cullen: Taking what I learn from printmaking and dissecting it to use different materials to build these images out… It’s like filling out my arcenal of different things I can use to do that. Like a big lego chest of materials to play with, it’s kind of fun!
See more of Cullen’s work on Instagram, @macaulaycullen and on his website, cullenhouser.com
In Process…
