“Robert Buelteman creates richly colored images of plants by electrifying the specimens with 80,000 volts of power and then illuminates the subject by hand with fiber optic light. Working in total darkness, he has abandoned cameras, lenses and computers for jumper cables, fiber optics and electricity. The California-based artist’s technique is an elaborate enhancement of traditional Kirlian photography, a high-voltage photogram process created in the 1930s. Considered so dangerous and laborious, Buelteman is the only artist using the technique.
He begins by whittling down flowers, leaves and twigs with a scalpel until they are translucent. He then places the plant onto a metal sheet sandwiched between Plexiglas floating in liquid silicone and introduces an electrical surge using battery jumper cables. Electrons leap from the metal, through the silicone, creating a blue haze around the plant caused by gas ionization, which is recorded on light-sensitive film. Then Buelteman “hand-paints” the tableau with white light delivered through an optical fiber, the size of a hair. This convergence of art and science provides a new interpretation of the design of life as found in botany.”
