Radiant Light: Alleson Buchanan’s Protest Art and the Music Illuminating It

The Seattle-Puget Sound based neon bender on how music and story are inextricably linked to her queer, feminist and progressive political expression as an artist, her devotion to Karen Carpenter, and toxic obsession with musicals.
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By Jonathan Bristow

Alleson Buchanan is a luminary.

A giver of light - 

Both literally and in the very essence of her being.

Owner of Radiant Neon, the quirky queer Seattle and Puget Sound area neon bender and activist is a beacon of hope and truth in a world desperately in need of light:

A creator operating at the intersection of art and collective liberation. 

Recently we sat down with our favorite witchy, intersectional feminist neon maker to discuss the role of music in her life and work.

“I don’t know a world without music,” she says plainly.

In homage to her late relative and outlaw-country legend Waylon Jennings, Alleson showed up to our convo in one of her favorite graphic t-shirts of Waylon and outlaw-bestie Willie Nelson that reads:

“Where there’s a Willie, there’s a Waylon.” 

“The rogue music-ness lives on in me forever,” she explains.

For Alleson, music and story are inextricably tied to everything she embodies as a creator. From her earliest childhood memories of refuge from trauma in singing and musicals, to crafting truly brilliant protest art today, music has been the constant: her source of emotional regulation and creative inspiration.

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