Bolinas Museum exhibit reveals the ‘Stories Within Rocks’
Rob Gailey has nothing but fond memories of the Bolinas Museum. It’s where he brought his two kids as they grew up on the weekends, watching them be amazed by the historical photos of kids, similar to them, that often hung in the History Room. It’s where his son later exhibited his own work and where his daughter did some of her public service internship in high school.
Gailey, who has worked as a hydrogeologist since 1985, mainly on projects in the western United States, never imagined he’d find his way to the museum, let alone any at all. But, that changed this month, with the opening of “Photomicrographs Reveal Stories Within Rocks,” the part-time Bolinas resident’s work that melds art and science. The seven pieces in the exhibit, which runs through March 31, capture the dazzling images of thin slices of rock he cut — like red chert — and then digitally photographed using his petrographic microscope.
“I loved the concept of Rob Gailey’s photos from the moment he first showed me a phone snapshot of one, especially because they are found in such ordinary-looking local rocks from the diverse trove of San Francisco Bay Area geology,” says Elia Haworth, the exhibit’s curator. “Gailey has composed these photomicrographic images by finding details that are both scientifically and artistically interesting — just as a photographer selects an area or crops a photo to present a specific composition. His images of rocks appear as abstract art, yet to a Gailey’s geologist eye, each image tells a vivid story that he shares with us — of millions of years of geologic change. Our museum staff has been delighted to see visitors’ reactions to the exhibition — fascination, surprise and curiosity to learn more.”
The geologist will discuss his work and the process of making it, as well as the geologic stories behind the featured images, at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Bolinas Museum at 48 Wharf Road in Bolinas. For more information, go to bolinasmuseum.org/exhibitions.
“This exhibit blends the artistic with the historical element, in this case, not human history, but Earth history,” he says.
Q Have you ever done an exhibit like this before?
A It’s the first time. The techniques that I used are optical mineralogy techniques that most geologists are trained in as undergrads. When I was an undergrad, I was making these slides. Some of them were just absolutely beautiful to me, and I thought I should take pictures of these. Back then, there weren’t digital cameras and things were just harder. Time moved on; I graduated. I picked it up later in life. I’ve known Elia for 20 years. And she’s someone who really appreciates the blend of art and science. When I started to show her some of the images that I was creating, she got excited. And I started telling her about the physics and things like that that were evident by looking at some of these pictures, and that got her even more excited.
Q When did you return to this?
A A couple of years ago. Once a geologist, always a geologist. I can’t walk across the Earth without looking at the rocks and seeing things in them and thinking about history and time scales that go much beyond human existence. I’m always excited about this stuff. At one point, I picked up a rock saw, thinking I’ll just put rocks in there and see what I find inside, and then, I recently got a petrographic microscope with a digital camera on it and I can capture these images digitally.
Q Are the rocks from West Marin?
A Five of them are from West Marin, two of them are indicative of the types of historically geologic forces that would have occurred in Marin. But it’s actually material from a countertop, quartzite. It’s one of the most fantastic images in the show, I think.
Q Where were these rocks found in West Marin?
A Many are from Bolinas Beach. It’s important to be careful about where one takes rocks from. You can’t take rocks from national parks or from state parks. It’s public land, and you don’t want to be depleting it. But there’s some places where you can take rocks, there’s an abundance of them and it’s not a protected piece of land. One of the rocks can be found in the Marin Headlands and other places, which are protected lands where you wouldn’t want to take one of the rocks. But having the training of a geologist, I can see the rocks. I know what they are, and I can find them in other locations that aren’t protected.
Q What drew you to this process?
A I was taken with the beauty of the colors and the juxtaposition of colors and the textures and the fabrics in these rocks. And for me, it’s all the more exciting in that I can see science and physics in that as well.
Q What about geology caught your interest?
A I was always a science kid. And then as a sophomore in college, I had a graduate level course in paleoclimatology, how the climates have varied over the years in geologic time. And that got me exposed to geology, and I got very excited about geology and entered the geology department as my major. I’ve been hooked ever since.
Q How did that lead to hydrogeology?
A My interest in environmental science. I was concerned about the environment, and I was concerned about groundwater contamination. Superfund sites were beginning to become known at that point in time, late 1970s, early ’80s. Geologists are good candidates to become groundwater geologists or groundwater hydrologists because the water is flowing through geologic material. I got interested in it and took a job in it when I got out of undergrad and worked in the field for a couple of years. And then I decided to go back to graduate school in hydrogeology.
Q What do you hope people take away from your exhibit?
A An excitement about how these things work. It’s enjoyable to me to have someone look at the rock on the shelf and look up at the image on the wall and marvel at how did you get from this to that? And that makes them a little bit more interested to read some of the paragraphs on the walls that describe how it’s magnified and how polarized light helps elicit the image and some of the features of the image. They’re doing what I hope for, which is that they’re getting excited about it.