It all started in Lubbock, Texas back in 1951, when I first opened my eyes and saw the light, and I've been drawn to it like a moth ever since. Even before conscious recollection, I was fascinated with electric lights when I discovered that I could control them with the flick of a switch. My first memory is of a room full of colored lights during the holiday season, when I was about 21 months old. Light has always played a major part in my life. From a very early age, it has been a reoccurring theme in many of my dreams. That's probably where I first saw it as being an aesthetic art form in itself. As early as age three or four, I was dreaming of images of colorful glowing objects that had no purpose other than their own aesthetic value. Or lighting used to create a surreal feeling of a whole environment. Then when I was about six, I got a close up look at a neon sign hanging in a store window. That fiery red glow that seemed to come from thin air just fascinated me, and had the same quality as the objects I had dreamed about earlier. It was there and then that I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. It was 1969, and I couldn't wait to get out of high school and into the 'real' world. By then, earning a living became top priority and thoughts of making neon and plasma art were put on hold. Another one of my interests led me into the field of electronics, where I worked as an audio technician and performed general electronic repair. After the business that I was working at closed in 1977, I decided to go in a slightly different direction. It was that year that I started working at Mechanical Systems, Inc. MSI was a handful of craftsmen who built, restored and repaired antique mechanical music equipment, like player pianos, nickelodeons, orchestrions and band organs. There, I learned machine work, cabinet building and restoration of antique pneumatic powered musical instruments. During my employment at MSI, a most curious set of circumstances led me to visit a small town a few miles north of Lubbock, where I discovered an old abandoned neon sign plant in a trailer behind a dilapidated sign shop. The renewed prospect of being able to make plasma sculptures resulted in months of negotiation, until I finally obtained the equipment on December 23, 1980. Within a month, I had reconditioned the equipment and assembled it into a working plasma studio. The only trouble now was, I had no idea how to work with glass tubing. Had I had any idea what a difficult road that would be, I might have abandoned the idea, but I was in it too deep to quit. It wasn't long before word got out to some of the local sign shops that I had a neon plant set up in my studio. I quickly became a new source for neon in Lubbock, and started catering to the sign shops that outsourced their neon. This allowed me to make a living while I experimented with glass, gas and electricity. For the past 25 years, my studio has been in downtown Lubbock, serving sign businesses in Texas and New Mexico with quality neon lighting made to their specifications. During that time I have also been making glowing glass sculptures filled with inert gases, which I usually refer to as modern "Geissler" tubes. As early as the 1860s, Heinrich Geissler, a German glassblower and inventor, produced small decorative, and sometimes very intricate plasma sculptures. These were the forerunner of modern neon tubes to come some fifty years later. I therefore credit Mr. Geissler as being the very first plasma artist, and a big influence in my work. Some of the media used in my sculptures that I am able to work with myself includes flameworked glass, ionized inert gases, woodworking and cabinetry, metal and plastic fabrication, and electronic and mechanical devices. My artistic intention is to produce ethereal works that utilize light itself, as opposed to reflected light. Most works depend on an outside source of illumination in order to be seen, but I enjoy producing interesting objects that provided their own illumination. Light, which is one form of energy, radiates directly from within the piece and travels through space at 186,000 miles a second, to arrive as visual information in the viewer's eye almost instantaneously. I believe the use of direct lighting in art has the unique ability to reach people on a very basic level. I also feel that light is synonymous with life, since we wouldn't exist without it. Because these works utilize light, they almost have a life of their own. When fed a steady diet of electricity, they are able to change that energy into a form recognizable to us as life itself. And like all living things, they will someday grow old and cease to function, although I expect many of my sculptures to outlive myself. It is my hope that you will see both beauty and mystery in my work. The beauty of the physical materials, their forms and relation to each other, and the mystery of light, as life itself. Tony Greer Lubbock, Texas March 2006