May 25, 2024
10 a.m. - Noon
Admission $10
FREE FOR MEMBERS
Book Talk and Signing: 'Neon Nevada'
By Sheila Swan and Professor Peter Laufer
Join us as we celebrate the publication of the updated and expanded edition of Neon Nevada!
Authors Sheila Swan and Professor Peter Laufer will be in the Neon Boneyard to share their travels of Nevada and showcase stunning photographs they captured of neon signs across our state. They will describe the evolution of the neon landscape from 1994 – when their first edition of Neon Nevada was published – to today, highlighting the beginning of a Neon Renaissance.
Books will be available to purchase on-site with the authors present to sign copies for anyone interested.
About the authors
Sheila Swan was tutored in photography as an assistant in her father’s California portrait studio, working with chemicals in the darkroom in those days before digital subsumed film. She joined the Nevada Craft Guild shortly after it was founded and there began her study of Nevada’s relationship with neon. With Peter Laufer she co-authored Safety and Security for Women Who Travel (Travelers Tales). Her essay on anti-war marches is included in the Creative Arts Book Company anthology, Shock and Awe: Responses to War. Swan’s memoir-in-progress is titled Starts…
Peter Laufer is the author of more than a dozen books, including his well-reviewed Dreaming in Turtle (St. Martin’s Press) and The Dangerous World of Butterflies (Lyons Press). He is the James Wallace Chair Professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. More about his journalism can be found at peterlaufer.com.
The couple met in Silver City, Nevada. They now live in Eugene, Oregon, and Marin County, California. But “Home Means Nevada” for them both.
About the book
Neon Nevada takes readers and viewers on a literal and figurative journey not only along the old Las Vegas Strip, but alsodown quiet two-lane rural roads punctuated occasionally with neon signs, those glittering beacons of civilization against the desert night sky – the argon violets, krypton purples, helium golds, and xenon blues that glow along with the red neons.
The book makes clear that Nevada neon is not just a medium for casino advertising. The colorful images of cowboys and cowgirls, women bathing in martini glasses and martinis sans women all illuminate an aspect of Americana—theneon sign—that helps define Nevada and Nevada businesses from bars and casinos to hardware stores, restaurants, motels, and other businesses lining the main streets of the Silver State. With its compelling blend of glorious and often irreplicable full-color photographs combined with its illuminating, personal, and lively historical text, Neon Nevada conjures up a mood unique to Nevada.
