Elaine Buckholtz Spectacle
Gloucester's Cosmos Gallery
By: Cosmos - Sep 09, 2025
Elaine Buckholtz
SPECTACLE
Prints, Light, and the Optical Art of Seeing
September 19 – October 12, 2025
Opening Reception: September 19, 4-7pm
Spectacle is a visual experiential exhibition. Elaine Buckholtz, a Light Installation Artist with a 25-year career in Lighting Design, has worked with artists such as Meredith Monk and Merce Cunningham. She brings a long history and depth of understanding to her light-based practice. Buckholtz has shown work in national and international venues and is currently a professor at The Massachusetts College of Art and Design in The Studio for Interrelated Media. ABOUT - Elaine Buckholtz
The COSMOS Gallery exhibition will introduce Buckholtz’s new optical devices designed for viewers to manually manipulate the light in their environment. Through handheld lenses, faceted glass orbs, and shifting light, the viewer is invited to create their own optical adventure – an exploration of mediated sight, wonder, and the luminous space shared between observer and world.
Test Prints
In addition, Spectacle will feature Buckholtz’s Test Prints, created by optical manipulation which converts a visual image into an abstraction of the essential colors. The prints will run from wall size to small, available for collectors. Even more optical innovation will be on display with Elaine’s accordion prints.
Buckholtz also promises to add some luminescence magic to the interior of the COSMOS Gallery, and perhaps to the exterior as well.
Elaine Buckholtz
Elaine Buckholtz is a Light Installation Artist operating in the space between installation, architecture, and landscape with interests in public revelation, physical and metaphorical transformation, biotechnology, and the technologically sublime. Her work transforms environments and sites into quiet spectacles, inducing a sense of wonder by activating architectural forms and spaces with moving light, sculptural elements and sound.
Buckholtz has shown work nationally and internationally at venues including Electric Works Gallery (San Francisco, CA); Proof Gallery (Boston, MA); Souzy Tros (Athens, Greece); In the Backyard Stories Festival (Batumi, Georgia); The Lumiere Festival (Durham England); Sonoma Valley Museum (Sonoma, CA); The Swiss Technorama Museum (Winterthur, Switzerland); Yerba Buena Center For The Arts (San Francisco, CA); The Claremont Museum (Claremont, CA); Pierogi Leipzig (Leipzig, Germany); The Wexner Center For The Arts (Columbus, OH); Sun Valley Center For The Arts (Sun Valley, ID); and Fusion Art Space (San Francisco, CA), among others.
Sam Webb
The collaborative optical devices, conceived and designed by Elaine Buckholtz, are fabricated and engineered by Sam Webb. He is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans from intimate, handheld optical devices to expansive, immersive installations. He holds a BFA in Interrelated Media from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Raised in the Berkshires, Webb draws deeply from the landscape of rural New England, grounding his work in a lifelong dialogue with the natural world.
COSMOS Gallery, Gloucester
COSMOS Gallery opened February 2025, with frequent exhibitions for mostly regional artists and no constraints on aesthetic genres. The gallery builds on the Cape Ann COSMOS media platform and our mission to enrich the good cultural life!
COSMOS Gallery
20 Pleasant Street
Gloucester, Massachusetts 01930