If you read my last post, you will have seen the neon rendering of graffiti on Park Hill in Sheffield. That piece of graffiti has become famous locally and, not wanting to lose the character of the building completely by scrubbing it too completely clean, the restoration kept it and literally highlighted it in lights.
Posting that image reminded me of another instance of northern neon love, which I encountered when I visited a friend in Wakefield and was browsing in the Hepworth Gallery.
12 Months of Love was a year-long project by two artists, Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater, which ran between Valentine's Day 2011 and 2012. Each month, a new love-based lyric was made in neon and mounted on the roof of a building in Wakefield, to intrigue and entertain passers-by and commuters on trains running nearby.
What a fun concept, don't you think? After all, who doesn't love neon? Okay, probably some people don't, but I certainly do. Who doesn't love a good love song though - whether it be sexy, giddy, heart-breaking or evoking any one of the many other manifestations of love? It would have been great fun to be a commuter in Wakefield on the first day of each month of that year, waiting to see what new lyric awaited you.
At the end of each lyric's run, the sign was auctioned off. That's definitely something I wouldn't mind having on the wall of my lounge room in my dream home... They did put together a book of all the signs, and there's pictures on their website, for those us who weren't lucky enough to score our own neon love lyric.
I wonder what lyric I would pick if I could have my own custom neon love sign... It would have to be something American, I think, from between the 1950s and 1980s... Perhaps a Blondie lyric? Any thoughts? What would you have?
