WOMEN IN NEON: PART II
The Midway Gallery, San Francisco CA
April – June 2018
She Bends: Women in Neon marked the organization’s first San Francisco presentation and expanded the project beyond its Los Angeles origins. Hosted at The Midway Gallery, the exhibition brought together California-based women neon artists working across sculpture, installation, and text, foregrounding neon as a contemporary studio practice rooted in hand skills, lineage, and experimentation.
Building on the exhibition, She Bends produced a robust slate of public programs that emphasized access and process. These included on-site workshops, live neon bending demonstrations led by Meryl Pataky, a panel discussionexploring craft, labor, and visibility in neon, and a concert by Lily Hiatt. In continuation of a tradition that would carry forward in later exhibitions, She Bends also hosted a Women in Craft salon dinner, celebrating women working across trades that engage fire and material transformation.
Together, the exhibition and its programs positioned She Bends as both a curatorial initiative and a gathering space—one where neon functioned not only as an object on the wall, but as a shared practice shaped through education, dialogue, and community exchange.
Exhibiting artists include Ali Feeney, Amy Palms, Anika Chasuk, Dana Caputo, Danielle James, Emma-Kate Hart, Eve DeHaan, Eve Hoyt, Kacie Lees, Kate Hush, Koko Jamison, Leticia Maldonado, Linda Bracey, Linda Diec, Linda Sue Price, Lisa Schulte, Lily Erb, Lily Montgomery, Mary Voytek, Megan Stelljes, Meryl Pataky, Michie Hongo, Olivia Steele, Robin Clason, Romily Alice Walden, Roxy Rose, Sarah Blood, Shawna Peterson, Stephanie Lifshutz, Sydni Gause, Teresa Escobar, Tory DiPietro, and Valerie Shusterov.
