The buzz of electricity, the heat of gas torches, an ever-present multi-colored neon glow, and a complicated maze of tubes, tanks, and valves make Matt Jackson’s neon studio look and feel like a mad scientist’s laboratory. But Jackson himself—in his trademark cowboy hat, bushy graying beard, and big, friendly smile—is anything but mad.

A third-generation neon signmaker and glassblower, Jackson’s been drawn to the radiance of neon since boyhood. 35 years ago, he began fiddling around with glass blowing and neon in his dad’s shop, and it still hasn’t lost its allure.

Through his company, Matt Jackson Neon and Soft Glass Works, he makes much of his living doing commercial sign work for clients from Idaho to Nevada. But the walls of Jackson’s small workshop behind his Salt Lake City home are covered in eclectic neon and blown-glass art. There are bleached cow skulls adorned with spiraling neon horns, mosaic fish sculptures made with broken colored glass backed in neon light, and neon glass tubes wrapped in wire so that the charged light glows in bulging abstract illumination. Some of his favorite recent projects are art installation-style commissions—massive, swooping, intertwined pieces that hang in public spaces like the Sundance Film Festival.

To Jackson, part of the allure of working with neon is the how it perfectly balances art and science. It’s been his main outlet for creativity and his curiosity since he was a kid. The process for every sign begins as an art with the drawing of a pattern—be it letters, images, or abstract shapes. Then he heats glass tubing over torch flame until it’s intensely hot and pliable. He slowly bends the tubing to match the shapes on his pattern, puffing a steady stream of air through a hose in his mouth to keep the molten glass from collapsing on itself.