thanks for the lead!

perhaps what you're looking for is to use the radial light instead of the spotlight, and mask it to leave what you don't want illuminated unlit. Turn off shadows. If you use the spotlight, then in the edit feature, under render option, you want to use infinite light instead of visible object.

black bkgrd, white lettering, saved as bmp... import into lattice feature, place the bmp in both areas and check ok, then from there, you do you manipulating, texturizing, etc.