In light art, God — or the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium on a scale that even Stephen Hawking can barely comprehend, let alone stare at — is the ultimate artist. Elaine Buckholtz is somewhere under that. We’re not sure where, but we think it’s pretty close, since her latest installation, The Urban Unseen: Examining San Francisco’s in Between Spaces, makes use of three Victorian houses; 1906-1910 Golden Gate Ave. She’s part of the exhibit of the same name at USF’s Thacher Gallery (an opening reception is today at 3 p.m.) in which artists like Buckholtz, Paul Madonna, and Moshe Quinn explore the interstitial places of the city’s shoulder-to-shoulder housing. Buckholtz explores this literally: She shines her beams on some of them for her site-specific installation down the street from the gallery, giving the nooks that house trash chutes and back-bedroom windows center stage. The front facades, shrouded by the night sky, are for once unable to pine for everyone’s attention like the painted harlots they are. It’s a bit of a meditative angle for Buckholtz, who's been known to hustle a portable light cart down 24th Street in the Mission District, dousing buildings along the way, and project psychedelic “manipulated image light videos” from every window in more than a few hulking buildings.
Feb. 25-26, 5:30 p.m., 2010
