2025 Visiting Artist Workshop with James Akers
Mind Benders: Neon Exploration
$995/person
5 day workshop from April 9-13, 2025
Wednesday-Sunday 9am-5pm (with a daily 1 hour lunch break)
Prerequisite: None!
Registration Deadline 2/26/2025
Course Description: An all levels week long neon intensive centered around digital design and physical luminous tube fabrication. We will be taking this age old advertising material and repurposing it for our own artistic desires. Learn the basics of neon bending in the morning while learning how to create their free form designs and planned patterns with free open source vector design software after lunch. Students will create freeform luminous sculptures as well as digitally shareable designs that act as scale-able blueprints for their neon dreams.
https://www.mnglassart.org/products/visiting-artist-workshops/p/james-akers
Artist Biography
My name is James Akers, and I am an artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York where with my partner, Ali Feeney, run a neon fabrication company called Nebula Neon making neon for large and small commercial clients and artists. I grew up skateboarding, and modding video games in Maryland before receiving a BFA from Alfred University in 2015. I have fabricated neon lights for artists (big and small) and a long list of companies. My personal artwork has been shown in museums, galleries, fairs and houses around the world. Artistically, I make sculptures that usually light up, interested in themes of celebration and excess, digital surveillance and influence, “Where ideas come from?”, consumerism, and rebellious subversion.