In the mid-'80s, a chain novelty shop sold a hologram of an attractive woman in a towel. When you walked around the three-dimensional beauty, she slowly opened her towel - only to close it before anything racy came into view. 

Holography, a method of making three-dimensional images without a camera, was introduced as an art medium in the late 1960s. But its mainstream applications have long been limited to the clever or crass. 

With that in mind, those who dismissed news of a holography exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art might be forgiven. To a public more accustomed to seeing holograms on credit cards or in cereal boxes than in museums, the hologram as art may seem a contradiction in terms - or at least a stretch. 

But New York holographer Rudie Berkhout doesn't create images that show up in wallets or on dormitory walls. He's a serious artist who just happens to use a laser as his paintbrush. 

He chose Alaska for his exhibit partly because he sees poetic justice in it.
"I imagine in Alaska, where you have a lot of darkness in the winter, that's a wonderful thing, to work with light," he said. Hoping the idea might resonate with Alaskans, he is planning a workshop in late February to teach others his technique. 

A background in stage lighting, clothing design and photography fueled Berkhout's devotion to holography, which he says began after he saw a 1975 exhibit at the Center for Photography in New York. 

Until he began dabbling in holography, Berkhout said, he didn't find any other medium challenging enough. Entirely self-taught, he's sought to master it. 

"It is still amazing, a big mystery," he says, "and that was the intriguing part for me, to try to understand it." 

But Berkhout isn't satisfied with creating mass-produced novelties. His goal is to discover what holography can do that no other medium can. "My interest is in light itself," he says. "I'm not interested in the reality. The reality that we live in is so phenomenal, it's so beautiful. Who am I to stick that in a hologram?" To that end, the Anchorage museum gallery dedicated to Berkhout's work is full of abstract ribbons and geometric shapes that offer both beauty and a challenge: What are these images, and how are they possible? 

The answers aren't easy. 

"Six-fold Symmetry," among the first pieces gallery visitors confront, introduces the form with a surreal mountainous landscape that seems to extend to meet viewers 10 feet or more away. 

In fact, the "mountains" in the landscape are mounds of sand Berkhout arranged in his New York studio, and a series of interlocking rings hovering over them began as six exposures of a plastic sphere illuminated from within. Putting these pieces together is "a very delicate process," Berkhout says. 

That's not the half of it. Understanding a hologram requires both a patience with optics and a dose of faith. Even Berkhout, author of technical papers on laser optics, often resorts to calling it "magical." 

The first hologram was made in 1947 by Hungarian physicist Dennis Gabor, who was seeking to improve the power of electron microscopes. But it wasn't until the development of the laser, in 1960, that the clear images we know today could be created. 

The basics aren't too hard to grasp: A hologram is the result of the interaction of two beams of light. One beam, the "object beam," reflects from the object being photographed to a special photographic plate. The other beam, called a "reference beam," is transmitted through the plate to meet the object beam. Where the two beams meet, a sort of miracle occurs. 

Like two sets of ripples meeting in a pond, the laser beams create a new light wave pattern at the point of intersection. This resulting "interference pattern" is recorded on the plate. After the plate is developed, much like ordinary photographic film, the image of the recorded object can be re-created by striking the finished piece with light. 

Berkhout's understanding of the technique makes him an unusual brand of artist, one who subscribes to science magazines, has applied for a patent on a holographic camera and has lectured on laser optics. 

"I'm an artist; I'm not a scientist," he says. "But for me, science is where the excitement is. I find the science world more exciting than the art world. The pictures (from) the Hubble are stunning and so beautiful. It's one of many scientific investigations that produce exciting new Art at the moment." 

There is still a lot of mystery surrounding how a three-dimensional image can be stored in a two-dimensional format, and the phenomenon intrigues many scientists. Some have suggested the hologram is a model for the way the brain works or the way the universe is set up. But you don't need grand theories or a scientific mind to appreciate Berkhout's work, he assures. "There is an element of mystery, and that's fine," he says. "You don't have to get it all." 

You just need to be curious. 

That's something children seem to know instinctively. One of Berkhout's favorite pastimes at an opening is to watch children interact with his art. Because many holograms must be seen at a certain height, Berkhout's exhibits include milk crates so kids can get the full effect. He's seen children engrossed by the images, moving back and forth, even trying to touch them. 

Their movements pay off with holograms, whose character changes with the angle of light striking them and the approach of the viewer. All give an illusion of space, seeming to jump out toward the viewer or float beyond the confines of their frames. Many contain images or colors that change when the viewer moves. 

Scientists "always" appreciate his art, at least on a technical level, Berkhout says. "They see the insane technological obstacles that Rudie has been presenting himself." But too often, Berkhout has seen adults walk briskly by, taking no more than a glance before they move on. 

"They just rush by and they see a flash and they don't know what it is," he said. 

"You need to be able to kind of open yourself and step around the hologram," Berkhout coaches in a low, soothing voice. "Go in front of it, behind it, explore (and ask), 'What the hell is this?' " 

Holography has been an unforgiving medium for artists, who have struggled with both its financial and artistic limitations. 

When Berkhout started in 1975, the cheapest laser he could get cost $1,200. Even with that investment, he had only one color at his disposal: red. He has worked for 25 years using only this color. 

"That's insane to say, 'Well, I'll make art out of that,' " he muses, "isn't it?" 

His multicolored works show that the limitation didn't stop him. He gets around the one-color barrier by chemically altering or optically "fooling" the photographic plates into recording different colors. 

The medium has other challenges. A single exposure can take 45 seconds (in contrast, the longest exposure available on most point-and-shoot cameras is less than a second). The long exposures require such stillness that even the rumble of a truck passing Berkhout's studio can ruin it. His holography table is set on inner tubes to help absorb such shocks. 

Berkhout expects a revolution in popular holography any time now. With small lasers coming onto the market every year, "new possibilities are getting so much more abundant," he says. 

With the advent of more sensitive holography film, even pen-sized lasers, like those sold as pointers and cat toys, can be used to create simple holograms. "You can buy this diode in a local gas station. It's hanging on a little rack by the counter," Berkhout says. "Beautiful! To me, that's unbelievable. 

"The laser used to be very expensive," he says excitedly. "Now you can get one for 15 dollars - 15 dollars!" 

The concept is invigorating to the artist, who for years has resigned himself to being among a lonely few devoted to the expensive form. He looks forward to a future in which the creation of holograms is accessible to anyone, even children, and he is eager to introduce others to the medium that has fascinated him for so long. 

To that end, Berkhout is not only displaying his artworks in Anchorage. When he returns at the end of February to disassemble his show, he will give workshops using portable "holographic cameras" he invented (patent pending) for the occasion. Every participant (the class fee is $100) will leave with at least one hologram and directions for creating a holography lab, attainable for only a few hundred dollars. 

Berkhout admits the approach sounds unusual. How many oil-painting workshops have you seen after gallery exhibits? But his greatest goal is to get everyone at least a fraction as excited about holograms as he is. 

"I'm just putting some seeds in the ground," he says, "and I hope to see some flowers come up." 

Reporter Sonya Senkowsky can be reached at ssenkowsky@adn.com.