- My first experience with neon, was calling a guy at a sign shop in Livingston, Montana.

I called him and told him who I was what I was interested in and asked him if he would be interested in having an apprentice.

And he said, women can't bend glass.

And he hung up.

And I was like, whoa, challenge accepted.

(laughs loudly) It's always been a man's world.

It's just up to women I think to just let them know we're here and we're not going anywhere.

For the few that have done stuff like that, you know, there's been more people who are accepting and could care less if I'm a man or a woman or an alien, they don't care.

They just, want somebody to keep neon alive too.

So it's been more accepting than it has anything else.

(upbeat music) (lights buzzing) (soft music) My name's Connie Morgan.

I'm a human, I'm a woman.

I'm a mom and I'm a tube bender.

And I live in Casper, Wyoming.

So when I first moved to Casper, I got a job at a sign shop and was so grateful that they had a neon plan already in place and set up and ready to go.

The owner of the sign company stated he's like, you know we probably won't do a lot of neon.

It's mostly just repairs.

People aren't buying anything like that anymore.

It's just, you know, it's dead.

And I kind of adopted that 'cause I was busy raising a family.

And as my kids got a little bit older I needed a side hustle and I was like, Oh, you know, I can utilize this neon plant that's here.

And I had to talk to myself and say, it's not dying.

I can do something to help bring it back.

Even if it's just occasionally making a sign here there, repairing one.

I just told myself, you don't need to believe what other people tell you about it.

Even in Wyoming, it can be done where you can make people see the value of it.

And so tube bending is basically you get long sticks of glass and they're four feet to five feet long, they're hollow tubes.

And that's where the term tube bender came from.

'Cause you're bending it in hot flame.

You bend the tube.

I use a ribbon burner, a knife fire and a hand torch and heat the glass up just till I don't know you get a feel for it.

It's not easy.

It's a lot of hand-eye coordination goal of the tube bender is to keep the integrity of the glass.

So you're wanting to keep the wall thickness the same.

You're trying not to stretch out the glass.

As you heat it up in a fire, you kind of I was taught that, use a technique called gathering.

And it's where you just gently as it's heating you just gently rolling it and kind of pushing it together.

As gravity takes over, it makes it sink.

So it starts to stretch.

So that's why, you know, when see me roll it in the fire, like it's, it looks all wobbly and I'm trying to keep it together and get it hot enough all at the same time.

So that when you come to the table with glass it's hot enough that it lays flat.

So you use the different fires for different types of bending, smaller bends like double backs and rises and turns can do in your knife fire.

These big long sections are done in the ribbon burner.

When I first started doing it, gravity would completely take over my glass would just sink and stretch out.

And you know, you're just trying to, you're going through a lot of glass, just trying to get the feel for it.

'Cause you don't want to bend glass if it's too cold, it'll be stressed and it'll break, I blow into the tube to keep the integrity of the glass the same.

If I don't blow into the tube, the glass will collapse on itself.

As soon as it cools down, it'll break.

You need to keep the hollowness of the tube the same all the way around no matter what kind of bend you're trying to do.

Like some bends will get narrower and stuff like that but your whole object is to keep the integrity of the tube the same.

So there's lots of different things going on when you're bending the glass.

It's a lot to think about.

The bombarding process is to clean out the tube to get all the impurities out of it.

Suck all of the air out of it put it under a complete vacuum, and then you put the gas into it.

And that's how you get the lights.

You get it through argon gas, neon gas.

I think some people use helium, xenon, Krypton to achieve different looks and effects with the gas.

As much as I love the brightness and I love to light up my signs for me the best part is bending it.

And that it's re... it's really hard.

It's not an easy craft, an easy trade to learn.

The school was only 14 weeks long and dealing with 14 weeks is not enough.

And that's when you hope to get a job with somebody who will continue to teach you.

I'm, as far as I know the only person that makes neon signs in Wyoming.

Wyoming's not the most populated state in the country, but you know to be the only person doing it it's just shows you how it's a dying art.

It's dying because of technology.

There's more advancements in LED signs can get things made cheaper and that's all fine and good.

And we all know that technological advancements happen in every generation and things die out because of that.

The neon art form craft has not changed a lot since it was invented.

I mean, there's advancements in neon as well but it's pretty much kind of made the same way as it was when it was first invented.

And I think that's a cool part of it that it hasn't changed a lot 'cause you can buy, you know, there's LED signs you can buy now that look like neon, they make it look like neon.

They advertise it as neon.

It's not neon.

There's no craft went into making any of that.

It's aggravating when they touted as neon and it's not.

When I see an old sign that's, you know in ruins or the paint's missing or the neon's all broken it's just this like part of me that just wants to fix it up and make it shine again.

I liked the old signs because I think it reminds me and other people of a different time, a heyday of neon.

I just, I guess I just want to keep that alive and redoing those old signs kind of does that for me.

It's what I'm trained to do.

It's what I know how to do.

There was many years where it was the main income for my family and I, I made a living at it.

I was able to make a living out of it.

What motivates me to keep going is my kids.

Their dad left almost four years ago.

And I realized that, okay, everything's up to me now.

My kids motivate me and the desire to not work for anyone else.

I don't want to be a cog in someone else's wheel.

I want to be my own wheel.

If something calls to you and you have a passion for it you're going to find a way to make a living at it.

And if it never feels like a job neon never feels like a job to me especially now working for myself, even though it is and there's more pressure now, it doesn't feel like a job.

I feel blessed to come in here every day and be able to do what I do.

If someone out there has a passion for it, then go for it.

Don't let anybody tell you no.

(upbeat music)