'Neon Mural No. 1' coming down

AUSTIN, Texas (KXAN) -- In 1988, a low-budget neon light mural in Downtown Austin won a prestigious international outdoor lighting award.

The commendation won it a place on the cover of Lighting Design and Application magazine.

Believe it or not, this local mural beat out a multi-million dollar lighting design for the Statue of Liberty.

Yet KXAN Austin News' Jim Swift reports Friday that even that honor couldn't save the artwork from the march of progress, some 20 years later. (The following is a transcript.)

"Country of 1,100 volts," says Neon artist Ben Livingston.

On Thursday night Livingston raised his paper cup in a toast to perhaps his most famous work and to the friends who helped him create it.

"I drew it on a big chief tablet, and he converted it into the computer," Livingston says. "And then it ran all these numbers."

He, in this case, was Livingston's cohort, Frank Roberts, who programmed the animation that controlled Livingston's piece, which he called, "Neon Animation No. 1."

"So I wanted to use a concept of a child's expression of the end of the world," Livingston says. "I thought that was kind of a heavy way to kind of really dial in the profundity of what we do by creating war in this world, and who it really reflects on are our children and the next generation."

So for more than two decades, a rocket ship has been routinely dropping a bomb on a flower, and in the process swallowing a child's home in a massive mushroom cloud.

"This was really my first politically active expression," Livingston says.

It was also one of the first times neon sign making was transformed into neon art, Swift said in 1988.

"Oh!  And then, well, little did I know, Dr. Swift diagnosed me with, 'gas seeping forth from my veins,'" Livingston shouts.

Well, close.

Here's how the narration actually went in that 1988 story:

"Neon is in Ben Livingston's blood," Swift says. "Or perhaps, there is no blood at all. If in a trip or in a fall, he cuts himself and cries, alas, no blood seeps forth, just neon gas."

Well, whatever.

"Change kind of hurts sometimes," Livingston says.       

The point is this: "Neon Mural No. 1" is coming down.

The building Livingston has been renting for so long has now been sold and another funky, "keeping Austin weird" downtown icon will give way to a condo or an office or something such as that.

"But you know what, I'm not retiring; I'm retreading," Livingston says. "And I think that my new shop's going to be great, and it's a whole new era for me."

Kind of like that flower that was bombed to oblivion in the neon mural and yet blooms again...

"Here's to the old girl, 'Neon Mural No. 1,'" Livingston toasts.

"May she live forever," a friend adds.

"May she live forever," Livingston repeats.

It looks like the mural won't die just yet. The city is building a central library and planning manager John Gillum said he intends to find a place for Livingston's neon piece in that new building.