Steve Provence

Ed Wesly · Post by **Ed Wesly** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:37 am

It is with great sadness that I cut and paste the following: (The hypenations were in the source material from the Charlotessville Daily Progress Web Site.)

Steven Douglas Provence

Steven Douglas Provence, holographic pioneer, died Friday, July 11, 2008, at age 54 of pancreatic cancer in Bocas del Toro, Panama.

He was born February 13, 1954, in Covington, Kentucky, a son of Robert N. Provence and the late Rachel Tuckwiller Provence.

He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and graduated from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill in 1975, with a degree in journalism.

As early as the 1960s, he was interested in the emerging technology of three-dimen-sional imagery known as holography. In 1975, he studied at the New York School of Holography, and in 1976 at Multiplex/School of Holography in San Francisco.

In the early 1980s Steve worked at Atari in Mountain View, California, to develop holograms for its early home video games. He founded Steve Provence Holography in 1983 in Boulder Creek, Cali-fornia, and produced the embossed holograms popular in advertising and security applications, and then deve-loped large-format holograms, which were embossed into rolls of foil and are found today in wrapping paper. Steve was described as "one of the wildest of the wild men in holography ever."

In 1992, he moved to Char-lottesville, where he founded Blue Ridge Holographics. Holograms he created in the late 1970s and 1980s, inclu-ding "Gears for Betty and all Faithful Machines," are part of the MIT Museum collection.

In 2004, he produced a docu-mentary on ramps festivals in the Appalachians called "King of Stink."

Steve loved good food, cooking, fishing, and music from the Canterbury scene of jazz/rock. He was a profess-ional drummer in high school. Some of his meals were legen-dary, and ranged from snap-ping turtle to snails to jamon he had cured.

Steve is survived by his father, Robert N. Provence of Matthews, North Carolina; his daughter, Sydney Rachel Provence; and son, Ross Nathaniel Provence, both of Charlottesville; his brother, Robert P. Provence of Powhat-an; his sister, Linda Ferguson, of Savannah, Georgia; and Lisa Gibbs Provence, the mother of his children, of Charlottesville.

Friends are invited to remem-ber Steve at 11 a.m. Sunday, July 13, 2008, at Beaver Creek Reservoir in Crozet.

BobH · Post by **BobH** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 1:35 am

Steve was the original "can do cowboy". I first met him in the early '80s when he was sharing a lab in the old Mountain View high school building with Don Broadbent. I remember one trip we took together in the mid '80s, down to Palm Desert to see Jason Sapan do a laser light show. We found them right as Jason was running up to take the controls, enjoyed the show, and partied late with him and his crew.

Later, when I needed a place to land, he offered the space next to him in Boulder Creek. Between the end of '88 and '92, I really enjoyed his company as a lab mate. I remember how proud he was of his "Active Watch" image; a very unique embossed piece with its animated hands. Steve was probably the world's only black & white holographer. His achromatic embossed holograms were done by the "open aperture" technique, and he was without peer in this regard.

I'll always remember Steve, as we stood there waiting for a settling time to finish, with a can of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other hand, his dog Budgie rolled up in by the desk, and just as he said "damn the laser's workin' good right now" we heard a clunk as the plasma tube went up to water! Oh man, whatcha gonna' do now?!?

Steve was always willing to help someone out. My brother John called him "Uncle Steve". I miss the volley ball games and weekly poker. I let an insignificant business deal get between us shortly before he left California, which put a damper on our friendship since then. A freakin' shame. But Steve was a genuinely nice guy, a good friend, cook and farmer, and one-of-a-kind holographer.

Rest in peace bud!

BobH · Post by **BobH** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:55 pm

Over the weekend I brought out a hologram of Steve I made in '92. It was done with Ron & Bernadette Olson and their pulsed green laser when they were still in Felton, just down the road from Boulder Creek. The transfers were done on 12x16" Agfa 8E75HD with a 28mW He-Ne, with the cropped image being 8x12". The rectangular black spot to the left is a reflection of something during photography, which was done with an MR-11 lamp.

Typical Steve humor seen in the pose.

jfairstein · Post by **jfairstein** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:37 pm

And here's Steve holding the hologram outside his studio in Virginia sometime in 2001. I visited with him as he was in the process of shutting the studio down and ramping up his jamon business. He is sorely missed.

: Steve Provence with pulsed portrait outside his studio in Charlottesville, VA in 2001; pulsed_provence.jpg (70.48 KiB) Viewed 3766 times

BobH · Post by **BobH** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 1:06 am

Great pic! Thanks for posting it.

Tom B. · Post by **Tom B.** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 7:22 am

http://webmuseum.mit.edu/detail.php?t=o ... e&record=2

You need to enable cookies and JaavScript or it shrieks "Access denied!". Clicking on the pics does not give
a big pic, just same apparent size as thumbnail. Still, nice gears.