As a child, she had been fascinated by neon advertising, and she built her career around illuminated art, with its special emotional power.

Lakich has received many private and public art commissions, in one case assisting the city of Los Angeles in a street-lighting project.

Lakich was born in Washington, D.C., but soon moved to Tucson, Arizona when her father's military career transferred the family to Davis Monthan Air Base and then to California when he was sent to the Korean War.

By day we read all the clever Burma Shave signs and stopped at every souvenir shop or roadside attraction that was made to look like a wigwam, teapot or giant hamburger, but it was driving at night that I loved best.

It was then that the darkness would come alive with brightly colored images of cowboys twirling lassos atop rearing palominos, sinuous Indians shooting bows and arrows, or huge trucks in the sky with their wheels of light spinning.

After graduating from high school near Fort Meade, Maryland (between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.), she went to college at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Film making proved to be too much of a group activity, so she returned to Pratt and earned a Bachelor Fine Arts degree in 1967.

Her first solo exhibition, at Womanspace in The Woman's Building in 1974, garnered a review in Artforum magazine by Peter Plagens where he commented "...the whole show is solid, however, I doubt whether Lakich will confine her development to static, confined neon, if for no other reason than the recent liberation of electric lights through Process, video, and performance art."

[2] In 1980 Lakich was one of the ten invited artists whose work was exhibited in the Great American Lesbian Art Show at the Woman's Building.

Because a savings and loan relies on the support of local residents and businesses, Lakich thought it would be exciting and appropriate to create a tribute to Dolores Restaurant.

When California Plaza on Bunker Hiss was extended, it created a dark, tunnel-like effect along the 300 block of South Olive.

The piece is constructed of lightweight honeycomb aluminum sheets in an abstracted human shape with streaks of neon lights incorporated.

But it has proved popular with the couple's guests, and it delights them that when coming home from an airplane trip they can spot it from the sky on the ground below.