2024 & 2025: Two Years of Island Life

Hey friend! It’s been too long. We hope you are well; at least, we hope you are finding bits of hope as we stumble through the darkness. It’s been a harder year than most for more of us than usual, and there’s a good chance you are no exception. We’d love to hear from you, to know your story, and to help each other through.

We (Alleson and Brad) are co-writing this newsletter, and hope to write together more in the coming year. If you’ll indulge us: It’s good to stop and reflect, and neither of us has written a life recap in a couple of years, so we’re going to cover 2024 and 2025. There’s no big news. The brief is that we moved to Vashon Island; Alleson expanded her art practice with her first residency and first solo show; Brad’s in his fourth year as an EM at Discord; our two dogs have had an uptick in health issues, but are mostly on the mend; we gained two nephews, a niece, plus another is on the way!

𐡷 Brad 𐡸

My 2024 began on a couch, with a cough and a headache. We’re in our wood-paneled Northgate condo. Two weeks prior we closed on a property on Vashon Island, with a 1995 manufactured home and a large detached garage. We’ve started renovations and I should be packing, but since Alleson and I both tested positive for COVID I am playing The Talos Principle and DOS2 between naps. Before I’ve recovered, my employer will announce layoffs at work. I’m fortunate to keep my job, but my team is reduced to three engineers.

Spring is consumed by the move. Roofers in the rain, new flooring, fresh paint, sanitizing the aging HVAC. We start living on the island in late February, then prepare the condo for sale as fast as we can: More flooring, painting, cleaning. At the same time, we close and move Alleson’s downtown neon shop in March. (Thanks mom and dad for all the help with both moves! And Thank you to my friend Neon and Sarah for the help painting the old space.) We also help our friend Gary move out of his apartment and workshop. He and his black lab Goose move into our guest room for the month of April, and he helps us frame and insulate the detached garage before he moves back to Michigan. By the end of May we’ve sold the condo, been to our brother’s wedding in Texas, and I’ve spent a week in San Francisco for work. I read Frank Lantz’s The Beauty of Games on the flight home.

Summer is spent putting the shop back together – at home this time, which is a welcome change after five years of keeping a shop across town. Framing and drywall is mostly finished, so it’s on to mud, paint, plumbing and wiring. We even move a staircase ten feet to the left! Setting up a neon shop is no small task: I manage to read The Religion of Whiteness and I Am Restored, and also roll credits on Bioshock Infinite and the Riven remake, before early August, when Alleson installs her first neon fabricated at home.

𐡷 Alleson 𐡸

Stumbling into our new neighborhood of Dockton felt cosmically aligned. In our first year, we discovered at least 80% of our neighbors are artists! They gathered at my neighbor Gale’s place in early June and decided to launch a new neighborhood tradition: The annual Dockton Art Walk. The timing in ’24 was perfect, and I soft-opened my new studio with the art walk over Labor Day Weekend. About 500 people came through that first event, making it feel more like a grand opening! I gave glassbending demos, and met lots of islanders. I’ve found meaningful connections in our new neighborhood – a kind of community I’ve deeply missed. While we have over 20 artists that participate in the Art Walk, I want to highlight a few special ladies (we’ll pretend I’m not picking favorites): Printmaker Annette Messitt of The Old Dockton Press, jeweler Lisa Witherspoon and painter Rose Belknap.

In October, I started my first artist residency: Together with Paul Nunn we were the artists in residence for three months at the Amazon Spheres’ Understory. Our directive was to engage the public (and staff) who visit the spheres. The bio-domes upstairs were only open to the public twice a month, so we had a lot of practice cheerfully reminding visitors that they technically were in the Spheres and could engage our art instead of feeling sad for missing the exotic plants – silly I know, but it was effective. We anchored our activation with my neon portal, zodiac signs, and new 3D crystal clusters, and at least fifteen of Paul’s spiral portraits. We invited visitors to see themselves as a portal – infinite, explore-able, and capable of anything! I spent much of the winter on location, engaging with visitors about my work. Sadly I was the only artist to date who was not allowed to make my art in the space – something about open flame or whatever. So Brad helped me produce a glassbending video loop for the giant curved screen in the space.

During the residency, NBC Universal hosted a Wicked Part 1 activation in our space, and commissioned a piece from each of us. To toot my own horn a bit, I made this 4-foot sign in about eight days. They were briefly displayed during NBCU’s pop-up and now likely live in LA in some executive’s office. Paul and I also got to meet Marissa Bode, who plays Nessarose and Ethan Slater who plays Boq.

Before we tear down the Wicked activation, Brad and I pop over to Yakima for a Neon Makers Guild meet-up – an organization I co-founded in 2022, dedicated to keeping neon alive. The Guild does a monthly digital Bender’s Brunch and at least one in-person meet up each year. It was fun to host the first PNW meet up at Boyle Brothers Neon in Yakima. The previous meet up was in Brooklyn.

December is pretty packed – we open my studio for two weekends during the island wide VIVA holiday studio art tour. The turn out was nothing like the art walk, but I sold a couple of my neon crystals. This place is incredible to its artists – I continue to be amazed and grateful. We close the studio for the year, and hop into the ferry line to go see family in Portland for Christmas.

While tearing down my Understory residency in January we sat on the floor, in the bittersweet feeling of closing a good book, and dreamed about what comes next. It felt like the end of a chapter. 2024 was my seventh year working full-time in neon. We scaled the business way back by moving it to our home and ending regular classes, and turned more of our attention to my art career. I was also feeling some major burnout. Wanting to think big, Brad asked what I’d do – even beyond neon – if I had five years to plan my next project. I had a fuzzy but compelling vision of a fully immersive experience inside MassMOCA. (Why MassMOCA? I think because back in grad school I did an Art Law project on a show that took place there, and their huge space was in my mind.) Some of the most compelling art we’ve both experienced is immersive theater. Unbeknownst to us, Sleep No More, the influential immersive show that ran for more than a decade in New York, was holding its last performance as we sat and dreamed on the concrete floor. We puzzled over what our version of immersive art might look like. I had already reserved space at Slip Gallery for some kind of solo show in the coming year. We decided to try our first iteration of something come Fall.

𐡷 Brad 𐡸

Most of 2025 is spent preparing for this ambitious show. The rest is a bit of a blur: we had a brief appearance at Axis Gallery in Pioneer Square in the group show “Times of the Signs,” with fellow neon artists, and sign painters. Alleson completed a large custom installation for Ryan Feddersen for the Washington State History Museum. She made neon protest art and wore it to the No Kings protests (complete with 45lb battery in a wagon), and made a new 5’x3′ activist piece for her solo show. We took a birthday trip to NYC where we saw Audra McDonald in Gypsy, took friends through Viola’s Room at The Shed, and saw the superb Masquerade wearing custom masks made by our friend Jim Corey that drew compliments from the cast.

𐡷 Alleson 𐡸

Through it all, I steadily chipped away at original artwork for my October show, titled “The Maiden Crone.” Originally conceived as a neon-forward immersive theatre experience set in three large gallery rooms, this project brought all sorts of new challenges. I wrote my first script, about a queer woman named Keeya (the “Maiden Crone” of the title) who lives in a greenhouse at the base of a cemetery. Keeya creates space, healing and community for those who seek it. In the script, she wrestles with and heals her past and ancestral line in order to transform the future.

I secured actors, but we ended up cutting the theatrical component and scaling back to an immersive installation – still no small feat. We hired Rite Guy Design Studio to help us design and build the immersive space. Installing everything felt like building a movie set inside a gallery. To ease the ferry life commute, we rented an apartment downtown for a few weeks to be closer to the show.

“The Maiden Crone” gallery show opened at Slip Gallery on October 10th, and the immersive experience opened on Halloween. The November Belltown Art Walk drew our biggest crowd. It was incredible to watch how people engaged the space. At one point, I walked through and saw a group had gathered items from all over the space: the crystal ball, crystals, candles and a tarot deck from one of the altars and started doing small readings together. It felt like visitors understood the assignment, and eagerly sank into the calm witchy world. It was gratifying to hear oohs and aahs as visitors explored the installation, and we were pleased with feedback that it was one of the most surprising and unusual exhibits people had seen in Seattle. The show was only up for a month and we were sad to take it down so soon, but now we get to dream about the next phase of our immersive art journey. Stay tuned!

𐡷 Brad 𐡸

In the middle of all that, our poor dogs have had lots of health challenges in the last two years.

Regina is fifteen now, and since June ’24 has dealt with occasional seizures, incontinence, frequent UTIs, and side effects from the medications to treat all of the above. Fortunately she’s been healthier for the last six months, and besides her failing eyesight (and selective hearing), is quite spry for her age. She had an ER visit this Christmas Day, and is recovering on her favorite electric blanket.

Rhoda just turned six, and besides having eleven teeth extracted in June (her cute underbite is now a cute toothless grin) she gave us a big scare in September when she spent a week in the vet hospital for a rare autoimmune disorder called Evans Syndrome. Her body was destroying its own red blood cells and platelets while they were still forming in the bone marrow, causing severe anemia. Transfusions saved her little life this Fall. (Did you know dogs can donate blood? We’re so grateful to Wayne, Rodger and Gary for donating and literally saving our girl.) A lot is on hold – including prep for Alleson’s show – during that hospital week. We celebrate our 20th year as a couple in the parking lot. After discharge, recovery has been a slow journey. She’s happy and very hungry now (thank you long term steroids), and still taking five medications every morning.

We’re impressed by, and grateful for, the wonderful veterinary care in our region. Honestly it’s been much easier to get essential healthcare for our dogs than ourselves. We’ve been so well cared for by Urban Animal, Animal Care Clinic, Timberline Veterinary Emergency & Specialty and Summit Veterinary Referral Center this year.

My own work highlight for 2025 was bringing official Wordle to Discord. I led a small team that reimplemented the game for our platform, with additional social features. We launched in May, and it’s been fun to watch it reach millions of players. At the same time, it’s been a year of change at Discord, which is pretty normal with the departure of a founding CEO. I’ve had four managers this year. A second round of layoffs in August particularly impacted my department, and I was fortunate again to keep my job. I’m working with a new team, and my new role is focused on platform health and safety rather than games. I’m grateful to have a job at all in this market. A lot of my friends and colleagues have not been so lucky. There’s so much churn in the industry right now over LLMs, and while I know some people see a gold rush I’m just not interested in taking that ride.

In case it isn’t obvious yet, I mark time through the games and media I enjoy. I got swept up in Animal Well last year and Blue Prince this year along with the rest of the industry. I was moved by George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, impressed with Chris Crawford’s Le Morte D’Arthur, and had fun reading Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary and Stuart Turton’s The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I had a bit of a card game kick early in the year with Altered, Mindbug, and Once Upon a Galaxy. I’ve been in a puzzle game phase of late with A Monster’s Expedition, The Daily Spell, and the Confounding Calendar. I’ve been enjoying The Secret Lives of Games podcast’s deep-dives into UFO50 and the work of Michael Brough. I get my news these days through NPR, AP, Axios, The Stranger, and newsletters like Dan Rather’s Steady and Isaac Saul’s Tangle. I dropped major social platforms a while ago (highly recommended) but I’m on a Mastodon instance for game developers and I still use an RSS reader. Besides podcasts, I’ve stuck to music I find soothing: A lot of Alexi Murdoch and Blind Pilot, and lofi by Mikel.

𐡷 Alleson 𐡸

I was swept away by the author May Sarton this year. I discovered Sarton in 2022 while researching my Medusa piece. This year I read Plant Dreaming Deep, which led me to A Journal of Solitude, both accounts of her time living alone in a rural area. The raw pain she expressed in Solitude was a shock juxtaposed to its companion piece – so I paused A Journal of Solitude, I’ll pick it back up later.

Sarton’s A Bridge of Years is forever imprinted in my mind and soul. Set near Brussels between the first and second world war, its parallels to today are chilling, and its expression of community, inspiring. Collected Poems became a lovely morning ritual of a few poems with morning coffee before beginning the day. The Education of Harriett Hatfield was a profound take on speaking up for the queer community no matter your age or lifecycle. The main character loses her life partner of thirty years, and uses her inheritance to set up a bookstore in a new town. At sixty, she realizes her partner hated the label “lesbian” and is invited to live life in a way that empowers others. This book is not for the faint of heart – Sarton tackles the fictionalization of real lived experiences of queer folk in the 80’s – I recommend it if you’re cis, het, or struggling to see how queer experiences are important especially right now. I also spent time reading other women authors from the 40’s and immensely enjoyed hearing their voices and perspectives from that time. I highly recommend Elizabeth Berridge’s Tell It to a Stranger, short stories based on the author’s experiences during and after WWII. I also re-read Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, Soujourner Truth’s Ain’t I a woman? and about fifteen others that I’ve documented less diligently than Brad. I’ve also been exploring psychedelic rock – we’ve been working our way through Pink Floyd and realized this Spring I’d not truly listened to Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland.” (WHAT?!?)

We both have a bit of winter break now, which we’re spending on fun food experiments, deep conversations, and preparing the neon shop for a new year (a.k.a. we just dumped my huge show in the studio and I can’t even get to my bench). We’ve also been filling our 2026 calendar with projects, events and trips, though who knows what surprises the year will hold. Brad’s got a puzzle game he’s been itching to publish, and I have a couple of fun book ideas. We both want to open the studio for more teaching this year, and there’s always work to do around the house. And of course, we’re looking for ways to care for our neighborhood, connect with distant friends, and be part of real change in our world.

𐡷 Brad 𐡸

It’s more important that ever that we stay connected with you. We would love to hear from you by email, or on Signal, or with a good ol’ postcard. Let us know how you’re doing! May your 2026 be full of community, resistance, and resilience.

Alleson & Brad Buchanan
Vashon, Washington
New Year’s Day 2026