Photos: Escape to the William Benton Museum of Art and a kitchen artist at work

The William Ben­ton Muse­um of Art is an often unno­ticed build­ing on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut’s cam­pus, hous­ing an ever chang­ing exhi­bi­tion of art from around the country.

Locat­ed direct­ly across the green from the UConn Stu­dent Union, The Ben­ton runs tours and entices art afi­ciona­dos each day through its doors.

While cur­rent­ly under­go­ing ren­o­va­tions, The Bean­ery — The Ben­ton’s own cafe and study lounge — offers a wel­come and tran­quil escape from the grind of a busy col­lege cam­pus. Not to men­tion a nice hot cup of Joe. Stu­dents await its return this Winter.

 

 

Mean­while in Sims­bury, CT — at small yet pop­u­lar restau­rant The Mill at 2t — aspir­ing chef Sean McNa­ma­ra, 24, runs things in the back room. Dur­ing din­ner ser­vice hours, McNa­ma­ra facil­i­tates food prepa­ra­tions need­ed imme­di­ate­ly by chefs in the kitchen.

Aside from food prepa­ra­tion, McNa­ma­ra is a pri­ma­ry dish­wash­er mak­ing sure that plates and sil­ver­ware com­ing from the din­ing room are clean and ready to go back out to ser­vice. This is an impor­tant job as stock of sil­ver­ware is in lim­it­ed supply.

The chefs the The Mill are con­tin­u­al­ly switch­ing gears and adding new items to the night­ly menu. The fast paced envi­ron­ment neces­si­tates a quick turn­around with pots, pans and oth­er nec­es­sary kitchen ware to run a suc­cess­ful ser­vice. Guess who is in charge?

Despite the fast paced and often chaot­ic nature of a busy restau­rant, Sean and the oth­ers around him always have room for their love of the job.