Seattle’s Kelsey Fernkopf Brings His Neon Landscapes to the Whatcom Museum
The Whatcom Museum is excited to announce the July 11, 2026, opening of Luminous Glow: The Neon Landscapes of Kelsey Fernkopf. The Seattle-based artist is known for site-specific installations that juxtapose the fragility of hand-bent neon glass within bold and atmospheric outdoor environments. Together with childhood friend and photographer Steve Gilbert, Fernkopf scouts natural and urban locales that become the backdrop for fleeting displays of light.
The exhibition at the Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher building will feature large-scale, freestanding, and visually arresting neon sculptures along with a collection of Gilbert’s photographs documenting Fernkopf’s outdoor compositions. Also on view will be a new image, captured at Whatcom Falls in March 2026. Luminous Glow will be Fernkopf’s largest solo exhibition to date.
“I was initially familiar with Kelsey’s work through his photographic collaborations with Steve Gilbert, but it was Kelsey’s installation at the 2025 Seattle Art Fair where I really saw how he was pushing the bounds of neon as a sculptural form,” said Whatcom Museum Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions Amy Chaloupka. “I was transfixed by the glowing shapes overlapping and merging together in space as I walked around them. I realized then that our uniquely large gallery and black, reflective floors might provide an ideal setting for Kelsey to envision a site-specific exhibition.”
Originally from Kansas, Fernkopf earned a degree in sculpture but has made a living bending neon in sign shops around the Pacific Northwest since 1987. It was during the closures of the COVID-19 pandemic that he found the time and space to experiment and expand his art practice, pushing his neon sculptural work into new realms.
Framing natural and architectural environments through line and color, Fernkopf investigates how light transforms our perceptions. In this new installation built for the Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher gallery, Fernkopf composes an interior landscape that appears to shift as viewers move through the space. Each new perspective invites fresh reflection and meditative calm.
“When I place my neon forms in nature, they alter how I see the landscape—becoming ephemeral points of arrival, portals that blur the line between here and there, and between nature and the neon itself,” explained Fernkopf.
The exhibition will run for eight months, and during that time, the museum will offer programming in the gallery with Fernkopf’s illuminated neon sculptures as the centerpiece. Added Chaloupka, “We try to provide audiences with new and different ways to encounter exhibitions because each time we return to a space or an artwork, our experience of it shifts and evolves.”
Fernkopf has worked with Tami Landis and the Corning Museum of Glass at the Seattle Art Fair, Foster/White Gallery in Seattle, and currently has works included in the group exhibition Haunted at the Tacoma Art Museum, on view through June 2026. When not working in his studio, Fernkopf can be found at Noble Neon.
Luminous Glow is on view July 11, 2026 – March 7, 2027.
Upcoming exhibition and event dates:
Whatcom Museum Member Preview & Reception
Friday, July 10, 2026
5 – 7 pm
Must be a Whatcom Museum member to attend.
Exhibition Opening
Saturday, July 11, 2026
12 – 5 pm
Dinner & Curator Tours
Dates to be announced soon.
Afternoon Artist & Curator Tours
Friday, August 7, November 13, February 5
1 – 2 pm
Included with museum admission.
About the Whatcom Museum
The Whatcom Museum was founded in 1941 and overlooks Washington State’s Bellingham Bay. Notable projects have included the 2019 retrospective exhibition WANTED: Ed Bereal for Disturbing the Peace, featured in The New York Times; the award-winning, co-curated exhibition Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea, which traveled to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2023; and Verdant: French Masterworks from the National Gallery of Art, which is on view through early 2027. Also on view is Elaine Horn: Broadcasting from Bellingham, an exhibition from the museum's Photo Archives. The Whatcom Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
The Whatcom Museum campus in downtown Bellingham includes three buildings: the Lightcatcher, Old City Hall, and Old Fire Station No. 1. For more information about exhibitions and admission, visit whatcommuseum.org.
