About Us: The Home + Studio of E. Wesly & Sons’ mission is to be able to pay the bills through hard work, including teaching jobs, consulting, holography, photography, kinetic sculpture, etc., with an emphasis on making the world a better place by Rainbow Projecting Glazing.
Here is the current Curriculum Vitae or resume for your perusal in Portable Document Format for downloading.
Tooting My Own Horn: There was a saying when I worked at CFC/Northern Banknote that “You’d better pat your own self on your back as no one else here will do it for you!” So here is a list of accomplishments and links to their details, backwards chronologically.
Twenty of my current art pieces were exhibited at Holographic Studios.NYC from July 11th to August 3rd. The name of the show is "Art Forms From Dimensions Tomorrow", a phrase I purloined from Sun Ra's album of the same name from 1965. Mr. Ra will be present at the event in a two-sided photo- and holo- graphic art piece, based on a couple of pictures I took of at a concert in 1979!
Other pieces in the show include Lightness and Being, Blowing Bubbles, Framed, A Peaceful Place, L-7, The Middle Digit, 6-Pack, Gold For It, HnH, My Ego's Twitching, and a few others. Check them out with their descriptions here.
This is the Facebook invite to the opening, and details of the show and workshop. This is the artwork checklist.
The 2025 International Sympsium on Display Holography at Lake Forest College was as big of a success this year as it was in 2024! Many thanks to all those who participated!
Photo Credit: Rob Taylor
Read more about it at the ISDH2025 website.
I somehow managed to get into the Hologram Issue of abracadabra!, a 'zine published in Chicago! According to their website, "Issue 4 is a 30-page choose your own adventure-style unbound experience in which space and time as we know them collapse into a singularity of cosmically conscious proportions. The order you read it is the order it's meant to be read. Printed by Perfectly Acceptable, Field of Grass, Riso Studio Arts, and Craighton Berman, showcasing the mystique of Alicia Bay Laurel, Becca Christman, Benji Haselhurst, Cole Hamilton, D.norsen, Don Slepian, Dulcie Yamanaka, Ed Wesly, Field of Grass, Jarad and Patrice Solomon, Jenna Chusid, Jennifer Hunold, John E. Bannon, Kurt Slanaker, Laraaji, Matt Marble, Mickey Miles, Robbie Simon, Rory WT, Sean W. Spellman, Shea Anthony. My humble contribution is guaranteed to make anyone laugh who knows who Dennis Gabor is! It pops up in the gif, you have to read it in the blink of an eye, or better yet, buy a copy!
Besides these written contributions, there is also an embossed hologram of a brain under the influence of Xanax from Gallery 1134, and what is definitely worth the price of admission, and works as advertised, "From day one, we’ve been manifesting a holographic flexi disc. One that would elevate the collective with sound, and which when no longer playable, could be displayed as a suncatcher, projecting the prismatic reverberations etched into the disc’s grooves with help from the sun ~ in turn radiating the room with a borealis of magical enlightenment." It is courtesy of Rainbow Symphony, and I am very impressed!
Nine of my current art pieces were on display at the Hologram Gallery in Seattle, Washington, from October 3rd to the 14th, 2024. About 500 viewers enjoyed the spectacle on opening night! Of course, the name is misspelled, but it is me!
The Krewe of the Home + Studio of E. Wesly & Sons was represented by the Sole Proprietor himself, plus one of the sons, Andrew, and his wicked stepmother, Betty Johnson.
To dig all the pieces in their unadulterated full screen glory, click on their names in this checklist. From left to right, My Ego's Twitching, Gold and Green (at top), Zone Plate 6-Pack partially blocked below next, A Peacfeul Place almost completely hidden, under it, totally hidden, My Blue Car. Green and Gold (corner missing, L-7 and Middle Digit at far right.
I organized the 2024 International Symposium on Display Holography at Lake Forest College, which ran from June 17th to the 20th, 2024, and it was an unqualified success! There were a few glitches, but everyone had a great time, having heard no compaints!
For more details, check out the web site!
The set started with what else, Space is the Place off the album of the same name, in Quadraphonic sound no less, followed by the first tune of Ra's I had ever heard, Moon Dance, from Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy. Then the most vampiest Plutonian Nights off of The Nubians of Plutonia, then the title track from Angels and Demons at Play, Interplanetary Music from Interstellar Low Ways, a rousing Watusa again from Nubians, Have you Heard the Latest News From Neptune, Neptune, Neptune from Discipline 99, another Quadraphonic recording, and then, "If you find Earth boring, just the same old same thing, then sign up with Outer Spaceways Incorporated from Nothing Is. All on vinyl! Sonny would have been proud!
Sun Ra at ChicagoFest, Summer 1979, B&W analog print by Ed Wesly, with Dr. Ph. Martin's Synchromatic Dyes, and Holographic Glitter,
April 8, 2024: I took a pair of 30 cm diameter condensing lenses (from an 8" X 10" enlarger) down to my friends' the Bertola's residence on Bushwack Cutoff in Pope County, Illinois where there was eclipse totality, and focused the rays from Apollo's light show onto some pieces of wood.
In the smoke from the wood you could see the cone of the focus, rainbow rays at the edges of the focus are due to chromatic aberration.
The scorch tapers off as the moon eats into the solar pie, disappearing near totality, then re-burning, looking like a pair of beady eyes
Close-up of a scorch.
Apollo waves hello an instant after totality!
Idea appropriated from John E. Bannon!
November, 2023: It's always great to see your name in print, especially if it's an acknowledgement of your scholarly input, and not as a perpetrator on the police blotter. Here is the slightly edited acknowledgement page from Lost Museums by Brian Armstrong, thanking me for my assistance in preparing his chapter on the institution known as Museum of Holography/Chicago, prior to that the Fine Arts Research and Holographic Center, and originally Gallery 1134 (look at those digits upside down on your pocket calculator for a true estimation of what it was like working at that joint).
And the Table of Contents reveals a diverse collection of the rise and fall of eclectic institutions that once brought joy to their visitors but are no longer with us. Each of Mr. Armstrong's well-researched and well-written stories are a joy to peruse, each a 10 to 15 minute witty excursion into eccentric individuals who had a mania for collecting something and wanted to share it with whoever was willing to pay the price of admission. I am happy to have helped out a little bit. So check out ISBN # 9798838883797 for a bit of fun!
If you don't know about Gallery 1134, check this out!
In the Summer of 2022 I again collaborated with John E. Bannon to build a 4 meter tall rainbow projecting pyramid for the Wicker Park Street Fest, however it was destroyed by a roving bunch of gangbangers! Details here.
The Winter of 2021/22 saw rainbows projected onto snow at Allerton Park in Monticello,Illinois for their anual Glow Festival with a 3 meter tall geodesic domw decked out with Holographic Optical Embellishments, my first collaboration with John E. Bannon, one of Chicago's greatest living artists! More details here.
During the Fall of 2018 and the Spring of 2019 semesters, I had the honor of consulting for Dr. Michael Kash, the Chairman of the Physics Department at Lake Forest College, and also to be a Senior Thesis Advisor for Zoe Darlington, whose project was the revamping and cataloging of the College's collection of holograms, to be displayed in the recently remodeled Dr. Tung Jeong Memorial Holography Hallway Gallery in the Lillard Science Center.
It was a trip down memory lane for me, looking at images familiar from when I worked at the College at the Summer Holography Workshops. Plus there were those from an earlier era, like over 50 years ago, including some of the holograms from the 2 movies starring TJ, (Veterans' Administration, Encyclopedia Britannica) complete with the objects depicted in the hologram! This link has some of my snapshots of the almost finished gallery in the summer of 2019, but this is an even better link describing the gallery, Zoe's thesis.
The gallery is open during school hours, contact the College for more details.
My biggest good deed for 2017 was to reunite the legendary Scintihologram with its creator, John Fairstein. Here it is reconstructed at the Home + Studio:
For the back story, see John's web site. For the thrilling conclusion, see this here site.
Interviewed by Mark Diamond for his Internet Radio Show, Hocus Focus on Jolt Radio in a show that aired on August 7th, 2017, (Purple Heart Day according to my Commemorative Air Force Calendar). Here is the archive of it.
I helped Matthew Schreiber build an optical demonstration sculpture for the Frost Science Museum in Miami, Florida. The image below shows Matt in a hard hat contemplating his magnum opus, downloaded from a New York Times article on the museum. A few more pictures that I took during construction are here.
Unfortunately if you get the urge to visit the museum to check out the piece you will be disappointed, as the artwork was on display for less than a month, being deemed by the powers that be as not interactive enough.
My role was to make sure that the demonstrations worked and specify and assemble them.
On behalf of the holographic community, I delivered an eulogy at the Tung Hon Jeong Memorial at Lake Forest College , on July 18th, 2015. A transcription of the talk derived from my note cards is here.
Being a child of the Space Race and the Cold War, I just had to present a paper at the Xth International Symposium on Display Holography, in St. Petersburg, the birthplace of holography in Russia.The published proceedings are still in press as of this posting (August 2017), so until they are available, an animated version of the paper is here.
I excavated the former Gallery 1134 from August 2014 to August 2015. Here is a Time Line compiled from documents unearthed there, and another Time Line related to the revival of that gallery, and this is a link to images from that dig.
Master of Ceremonies for Holo Rescue 1.0, a show of holograms from the collection of Gallery 1134, on December 4th, 2014.
As a holographic and laser scholar I have few equals. My Laser Museum made the news! (January 2014) (If that link doesn't work, try here.)
I was a member of the team that took the first Plastic Camera Shot at the Edge of Space. Just Google “Holga in the Stratosphere” or click here to check out the YouTube. I assembled the electronics that fired the cameras at the apogee, just before I got word my full-time professor position was eliminated. (August 2013)
Hans Bjelkhagen gave a shout out to his peeps in the forward to his new book, Ultra-Realistic Imaging: Advanced Techniques in Analogue and Digital Colour Holography, (with David Brotherton-Ratcliffe) and I was fortunate enough to be included (June 2013)
I was awarded Summer Release Time in 2012 so that Harrington College of Design’s Digital Photography Department could have bragging rights to a History of Photographic Technology teacher that not only talks about and shows daguerreotypes but has even made them! To make the plot all the more insane, when I was mad-rap pitching the plot to my boss to pick up the tuition, I sweetened up the deal by volunteering to drive out to Montana on my fly BMW R1100R to make a 19th century image of a 21st century machine! (August 2012)
Here is an Adobe Web Gallery of the fruits of the labor, the Daguerreotypes. This is a link to the full-blown Report I had to file as part of the time off deal.
I can only legally claim to have been a finalist in the Career Education Corporation Educator of the Year Competition for 2011, but if you read the other finalists’ descriptions I think you would concur that I really should have won! (May 2011)
The multi-talented English artists Michael Wenyon and Susan Gamble have produced works at the Home + Studio. The first image that you encounter at their web site was shot here, and the Studio is credited at 4:01 in their video, A Universe Held Up For Inspection. (November 2011)
My Final Project for a graduate school class at National Louis University, TIE 544, Curriculum Application of Multimedia Authoring, was on Eadweard Muybridge, Photographer, Father of the Motion Picture, Murderer. This project so impressed my instructor, Craig Cunningham, that he sent it to Roger Wagner, the creator of the program, who used it as an example of what could be done with the program. Here is a link to my deck of Hypercards, which you will have to unzip, then click on Muybridge 2b in the Stacks folder, plus you might have to download the free HyperStudio Player to watch it. But it Is is worth it. (Summer 2010)
I was acknowledged in Hans Bjelkhagen's earlier magnum opus, Silver Halide Recording Materials for Holography and Their Processing. (January 1993)
I was the narrator for the video "Lippmann Denisyuk Holography" produced by Hans Bjelkhagen. You can hear my improvised explanations in my nasal Chicago accent in front of the background music by Sun Ra and his Arkesta, including "Love in Outer Space" and "Song for Tree and Forest" from his compilation "Out There a MInute". (1993)
It's not like having a cover photo on Time or Life, but Laser Focus World is not too shabby for a holographer/photographer's portfolio. The Beam Combining HOE featured in the "HOE for Holography" paper graced the cover of their July 1989 issue. Click here for a high res pdf of the cover if you so desire.
The toot at the top for my Laser Museum was not the first time I was in the Reader, Chicago's Free Weekly. Here I am in antiquity giving the Russian Lion Hologram a pair of the eye donkers a la the Three Stooges when I worked at Gallery 1134. (October 1980)
