We are fascinated by neon, but there's much more to it than just a brightly colored tube of light.

Neon is a gas.

When it is put into a closed vacuum and an electrical current pass through it, the now ionized gas gives off the glow we know as neon.

Neon gas produces a red color under high voltage.

Argon gas is also used.

It produces a brilliant blue light when mixed with mercury.

Artists can create other colors by using tubes coated with fluorescent powders.

Henry Levine is one of a handful of Columbus artists incorporating neon into his artwork.

This interest led him to set up his own company.

The neon is a glass envelope in which I put the gas inside of it.

So the first thing I do is prepare the glass envelope.

What I do, is I bend it to shape.

I have four foot lengths of glass that I heat up to about 1,800 to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

And I get it good and hot, and then I shape it to fit the pattern and block it.

To make sure it's nice and level with the table.

To keep the tube from collapsing when bent, air is blown into it.

If you just took a neon tube and heated it up real hot and then just bent it, it would crimp like a copper hose.

But when you blow through it, put a little pressure in there, it completes the bend and makes it nice and smooth.

Once I'm finished completing all the bends, I seal an electrode onto the ends of either end of the tube.

And this is just a way of getting the electricity into the glass.

The tube is welded onto the manifold and then a slight vacuum is drawn.

Since there are different gasses in there, like oxygen and carbon dioxide, those gasses give off more heat energy than light energy.

So when you zap it with electricity, it heats up the glass.

What I'm doing is heating up the tube, getting the glass real hot, and then burning off the impurities that might be in the tube.

And then I pull those impurities out with a vacuum.

When the atmosphere inside the piece is free of all contaminants, the tube is filled with neon or argon gas and sealed.