L.A. Holographer Sees the Light at Prague Fest : * Art: Steve Weinstock’s holograms have gained him worldwide acclaim, but not in his hometown. He is representing the U.S. at the International Festival of Light.

Steve Weinstock was an engineering major at Brown University wandering the school’s halls one day when a small, hand-scrawled “holography” sign outside a lab caught his eye. After venturing inside, he immediately signed up for an introductory course, and was on his way to becoming one of a small international group of fine artists in the little-recognized medium.

“My interest in holography originally was just for the technology,” Weinstock says, referring to the process of using a laser to record a three-dimensional, multicolor image on holographic film. “Then somewhere along the way I started doing things that people told me I wasn’t supposed to do. I was experimenting and becoming more involved in the art of it. My process was really an evolutionary one.”

Weinstock, 26, eventually was graduated with a liberal-arts degree from Brown after fashioning his own independent study course in holography and art. But although he returned to his native Los Angeles a few years ago, he has only recently begun making a small dent in the local art scene, which has no respected outlet for holography-based work. Weinstock’s holograms have earned him a growing international reputation, however, including shows in Toronto, Atlanta, Montreal and Nagoya, Japan, as well as New York’s Museum of Holography, which has collected his work.

Now his art has taken him to Prague, where Weinstock is representing the United States in the International Festival of Light, an artistic and spiritual celebration that begins today in the Czech capital and will be attended by participants from 20 countries. Weinstock also will travel to the Soviet Union to firm up plans for a collaborative exhibition with noted New York holographer Rudie Berkhout and Soviet composer Andrei Misin scheduled for next summer in Leningrad and Moscow.

“I’m so excited about Prague--the work will be shown in a context of light and not technology, and for me that’s really important,” said Weinstock shortly before leaving Los Angeles. “It’s been hard for me to show this work and get anywhere, because it’s not taken seriously. Holography suffers from preconceptions that people have that it’s just gimmicky--something you see on cereal boxes and credit cards, or that it’s too technical to be expressive. But my holography is so low-tech; it goes against that whole idea of a quarter-million-dollar studio with technicians running all over the place.”

Weinstock has developed a technique for his works that is similar in concept to photographer Man Ray’s shadowgrams of the 1920s. He places objects--including tree branches, bones, small paintings on cellophane, even junk food items--in front of the holographic film and exposes it with a laser to record abstract shadows of the objects, which seem to float in various planes of space. The colorful holograms deal with subjects ranging from humorous word plays to commentaries on urban blight.

Weinstock is scheduled to exhibit work in “A Face in the Crowd: Contemporary Portraits,” beginning Aug. 13 at Woodland Hills’ Artspace Gallery, but the recipient of a recent $10,000 Shearwater Foundation Holography Award has yet to find a Los Angeles venue to view the genre as “serious art.”

“There just isn’t an existing market in L.A. for holographic art, the way there is in Europe and other places,” said Weinstock, who sells his works for $200 to $2,000. “I think it’s because people are afraid to take a chance on a new medium.

“But people are starting to become aware of holography. Now when I meet someone and tell them I’m a holographer, they don’t ask me what kind of pens I use anymore. Instead, they say, ‘Wow, do you really have a laser?’ Before they didn’t even know I needed a laser. So all I have to do now is get people to understand the artistic implications of it.”

Weinstock’s Prague exhibition--as well as the planned Soviet shows next summer--is one of the first projects to be sponsored by the L.A.-based International Exchange Foundation, a nonprofit organization formed in 1990 by Judith Johnston-Weston. The foundation’s purpose, she says, is to give Los Angeles a strong presence in international art circles, facilitate international cultural programing here, and tie in cultural components with all visiting or traveling business and trade shows.

“It’s important for Los Angeles’ cultural activities to be recognized internationally,” said Johnston-Weston. “So much of L.A.’s international business and trade revolves around culture. We want to tie in to that and enhance it.”