![]() That’s when I contacted Stephen Antonakos and Rudi Stern, who eventually became mentors. But at some point, I reached commercial overload and shut the business down to concentrate on my real calling, art. I also designed numerous sets with neon for film and TV, namely Austin City Limits. Neon was going to be my thing one day… Little did I know that ten years later, I’d be in Rudi’s second book.Īfter an arduous apprenticeship and stint in New Zealand as a Journeyman neon glass bender, I opened and operated a business, Beneon, creating and restoring neon signs for Austin landmarks like the Continental Club, Threadgills, Amy’s Ice Cream, Broken Spoke and Grove Drugs. ![]() Like an electric crayon.” Back home in our little library I found one book called “Let There Be Neon” by Rudi Stern. That’s when I realized the possibility of drawing with light. I’ll never forget how I was smitten by the linear quality of that glowing neon. The WPA also introduced me to neon in the form of a big 1950s Dutch Masters Cigar sign that we hung over the dance floor. This shindig included a sawdust dance floor, a Terlingua chili champ, a Gilley’s mechanical bull and Terry Allen banging out “Truckload of Art” with just about every Lubbock musician who ever yodeled at a flatland moon. In 1980, Washington Project for the Arts commissioned us to turn their entire space into a Texas dance hall. As a kid, I learned about building sets for my grandmother at the little theater in San Antonio, and later as a young man for Polly Lou’s Parties. She later designed crazy-elaborate parties all over Texas. She brought in fine artists from all over to show their work at our house in Victoria for art shows she’d call Polly Lou’s Art-Tea Parties. ![]() My mom was a major aesthetic influence on me throughout my childhood. Brilliant story-tellers and songwriters like Kinky Friedman and Terry Allen and poets like Ginsberg and Bukowski filled my head with new ideas and most importantly, permission to be myself. Profound thinkers spun the wheels of my teenage imagination like a hit dog. Until then, the pressure would build as KPFT’s airwaves filled my room with a radiant atmosphere serving up the most interesting content that the 1970’’s could muster. My parents loaded my formative years with enough art and culture to shoot me out of south Texas like a bullet from a gun. Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben Livingston.Įvery artist has a unique story.
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