It’s amazing how much effort can go into a simple greeting.

“This process hasn’t changed since it was invented,” Joan Peter said. “There’s no way to speed it up – it’s one bend at a time.”

Peter was speaking not of a verbal “hello,” but of the older-than-you-might-think art of neon.

She and Laurie Lewis, her colleague at Kingston’s Custom Neon, hosted a contingent from Bainbridge Arts and Crafts on Thursday to witness the creation of a new sign for the front of the shop.

The message will be short, sweet, and perky: “Hi.”

Executive Director Susan Jackson, in attendance at the studio demonstration along with a handful of BAC board members and volunteers, noted that the Winslow Way gallery has never had an Open sign. At one point they had a hand-lettered card that never did much for her – “too much like calligraphy,” she said.

So seeking a little spark, “a little noise,” she approached Lewis and Peter about crafting a small piece that would welcome visitors and passers-by.

“It’ll be a little thing on Winslow Way that people will be able to see,” Jackson said.

Peter and Lewis have created all the neon pieces on display at BAC.

Director of Exhibitions David Sessions, also in attendance at Custom Neon, said that years ago he tried to put a neon show together for the downtown nonprofit gallery that featured a group of Seattle artists.

“But they all flaked out. And then one month, Joan and Laurie showed up on our doorstep,” he said.

The two juried into a gallery showing one year, receiving a glowing reception.

The process of creating a neon sign or figure requires a combination of exacting patience and free-form artistry. Lewis began with a roughly 2-foot tube of leaded glass coated with green phosphorus. The color of the glass has an impact on the final color of the neon creation.

This particular “Hi,” when bombarded with a combination of gas and electricity, was destined to be orange.

“It’s what happens to my staff when I bombard them,” Jackson said. “They kind of turn orange, too.”

Using a pencil drawing as her template, Lewis – who learned the art of neon from her grandfather – marked the bend spots, then heated the glass over a torch, repeating the process numerous times.

Viewers expressed delight as the form took recognizable shape, finally settling into its duo of letters under Lewis’ sure hand. She smiled the entire time.

Peter then vacuumed impurities from the tube and attached hand-blown electrodes to each end.

A moment of truth arrived when it was time to bombard the tube with electricity.

“That’s the scary part,” Lewis said. “That’s the Frankenstein (part)…”

“…Where you can die,” Peter finished.

No one died. Instead, a happy little “Hi” came to glowing life, to a collective exhalation of “Oooooh!”

With proper preparation, Lewis and Peter said, a neon creation can last 20 to 30 years. Here’s to many years of BAC welcome.

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