Geoff Williams spends his workdays creating images using microscopes as the manager of Brown’s Leduc Bioimaging Facility. But one of the most recent images Williams showed on Brown’s campus was not taken through a microscope — it was a photograph shot on an analog camera.
This winter, Williams displayed his passion for photography in “After Hours: Annual Staff Art Exhibition,” an exhibit highlighting art by staff across the University hosted by the Brown Arts Institute. The exhibit — which opened on Jan. 31 — is on display through Friday.
For years, the exhibition has showcased the diverse and hidden talents of Brown’s staff. This year, staff were invited to submit artwork in varying mediums, including painting, pottery and photography.
Williams said that at Brown, his “career and art are pretty intertwined.” At Brown, he helps students and researchers capture “powerful images using all the microscopes.” But his photographic skill isn’t limited to scientific endeavors — his work at the bioimaging facility and his personal photography both entail “creating an engaging visual aspect.”
Williams submitted an archival ink print of a film photograph of a heron for the exhibition, entitled “Heron on the Hurricane Barrier.”
For Kelly Baraf, who works at the School of Public Health, the exhibition was “an opportunity for fun.”
“I’ve been making art really my whole life in some way, but it is not what I chose to do for a career,” Baraf told The Herald. “Everyone has paths they didn’t choose.”
The show allowed for Baraf’s children, who previously didn’t know “the other sides of their mom,” to get to know her artistic side, she added.
For her submission, Baraf submitted an acrylic landscape painting inspired by a bike ride she took in Newport. Baraf says she enjoyed the change of pace the process of making the painting brought on.
“It's really important to kind of feel balance in life and work” Baraf said. “Regardless of what you do, work can feel really predominant.”
Head of Library Systems Bart Hollingsworth, who submitted a sculptural self-portrait made out of various metal scraps, said that the exhibition “makes (Brown) feel more like a community.”
Hollingsworth added that he wanted to explore what it is to be “built out of different pieces,” which “we all are in a way,” he explained.
“When I finished it, I thought ‘Okay, well, I don't really like it,’” he said. But “we’re all first drafts of ourselves.”
Daniel Watkins, a senior research associate at the School of Engineering, submitted a collage, entitled “Cathedral of Noise,” that he made in 2016 while working towards his Ph.D. Watkins said that he had an interest in art during his undergraduate years, during which he studied applied mathematics.
“There’s often connections between the way that you think about things for mathematics and the way that you think about things in art,” Watkins said, noting that both are “different ways to approach trying to understand and represent the world.”
The BAI’s senior creative technologist Leo Selvaggio noted that he has “worked in several different academic institutions” and that “not one of them has had an exhibition for staff.”
“That is very rare and a really beautiful thing that Brown does,” he said.
Millie Barter is a senior staff writer covering RISD.
