Nobel Prize winner Wally Gilbert uses the lenses of science and art

Wally Gilbert has done a bit of everything—including winning the 1980 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Now he has switched gears from scientist to photographer and graphic artist, with his work showing March 4-7 at the Dylan Hotel’s Verge Art Fair.

Gilbert’s science career began at Harvard and Cambridge universities in theoretical physics, from which he moved to molecular biology, biochemistry, neurobiology, and later into biotechnology. In 1980, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of gene sequencing. Gilbert now spends the majority of his time actively engaged in photography and digital artwork, which he shows across the globe.

In short, Gilbert has done many things, and he has done them all well. He is both a scientist and an artist, yet he does not see these categories as mutually exclusive. Rather, all of them require the same creative, curious impulse and the same will to change with the times.

Gilbert’s studio—located in an old factory-gone-artists’-commune in Somerville, Mass.—is covered with large-format prints of his work, some of them twelve feet tall. Over small cups of espresso and a table strewn with art books, Gilbert discussed his varied pursuits. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Do you miss the lab?

Well, I’ve got my computers here [chuckling]. Yes and no, I don’t miss it in the sense that I seriously want to go back. A lot of the great joy of working in the laboratory is doing these experiments. When you run the lab, you’re talking about them, but you’re not involved in the same way. Art is like an experimental work. I’m at the computer and I experiment. Sometimes I make images I like and I think that’s a good outcome.

Have you always been an artist, or did you start with that later in life? Did you always feel you could be an artist?

I would never have thought about it. I’ve only been an artist seriously for five or six years. I’ve always used a camera; as a child I developed film, made enlargements. Then I used a color camera just as a record keeper for years and years. Digital cameras came in and I carried them around, but not for any purpose. I’d occasionally take photos, but not thinking very much. Around 2000, I discovered I could make 13” x 19” images and thought, “Hey, that’s pretty big.” Then I went up to 2’ x 3’, 4’x6’, 8’x12’, even with a small camera. Then I started doing it seriously as an art form, because the large images have an impact that the smaller ones don’t, more emotional impact.

Do you find that your career as a scientist influences your art?

People keep on trying to find some connection between the science and the art. I think there’s a deep connection in that I would visualize experiments and the results of experiments in graphical or two dimensional form in science, and with the art I do it’s a two dimensional visualization. So there’s a parallelism there, but what I do in art is wildly different from what I did with the microscope. So I don’t see a connection there. I probably psychologically avoid connecting and doing what is related to the science. There’s a problem in that the things that illustrate the science I find annoying if viewed as art. But there is an experimental aspect to the approach that I use in creating the art. I use the computer as an experimental tool. I’m not afraid to experiment, and if I like it, I keep it. The power of the computer when you do this sort of art is that you can keep everything you like and build on it, go back to it. There is another similarity between science and art in that both are driven by a creative impulse. Many fields of human endeavor are. In both cases, you’re ultimately trying to create something new that people will appreciate.

What would you do with 12 more hours in the day?

More of this.

The Verge Art Fair is held at the Dylan Hotel, 52 E. 41st St., (between Park and Madison avenues). Thursday-Sunday, March 4-7. Student tickets are available for $5.