Steven Douglas Provence

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.


This obituary was originally published in the Daily Progress.