NEWPORT, R.I. — Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport employee Nancy Knott achieves balance in her life by living out her personal philosophy: “Even if you love your job, don’t let it take over your life.”
A visual information specialist in the Graphics and Imaging Branch of the Corporate Operations Department, Knott is the designer behind many of the images on NUWC Newport’s monitors used for digital signage and Command messages. She designs and is involved in production of displays for technical conferences such as the Leadership in a Diverse Environment (LDEE) events held in Virginia. Other conferences, such as Undersea Defense Technology and Maritime/Air Systems and Technologies Asia, have included international travel including trips to Australia, Singapore, Germany, Sweden and Scotland. Recently, in response to NUWC Newport’s increasing demand for video products, Knott has become involved in filming, editing and post-production of projects in that medium.
For most of us, a balanced life can be difficult to achieve, but Knott’s key to success, both at work and play, is her positive energy and love of learning new skills. She has a wide range of interests to choose from in her spare time — from playing the ukulele to dancing the tango – so she doesn’t get bored. And she doesn’t pressure herself to be an expert in any of these activities.
“Friends ask how I find the time to do so many things,” Knott said. “I’m not really good at any one thing. I like to dabble.”
In recent years, her pursuits have taking a turn toward some new experiences, such as the sport of curling. Knott, a North Kingstown, Rhode Island, resident, heard that curling was being taught at the Ocean State Curling Club in Smithfield, and, with her daughter, decided to give it a try. Some friends became interested too, and they all joined the league. Curling is played on ice by two teams of four people each, and involves sliding heavy, polished granite stones, called rocks, across the “curling sheet” toward the “house,” a circular target marked on the ice. Players wear special grippers on their shoes for traction, not skates.
One of Knott’s primary passions throughout life has been her art, primarily working with stained glass. Finding time to express her creativity during child-rearing years and while she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications media technology from Salve Regina University, and museum studies from Johns Hopkins University, respectively, was difficult, but in recent years she rediscovered her love of it. New creations include stained glass pieces for yearly raffles held at her curling league’s bonspiels (tournaments). She also made several glass decorations for her daughter’s baby shower last year, and a special one for her 10-month-old grandson’s bedroom window called “Color Wheel.” Currently she’s experimenting with a new technique involving image transfer that she learned from Daniel Maher, a well-known stained glass expert from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For the past three years, Knott’s family members and friends have participated in a Rhode Island film competition called the 48-hour Film Project. Teams of filmmakers choose a genre and are assigned a character, prop and line of dialogue to incorporate into a 4- to 7-minute film within 48 hours. The competition requires writing a script, creating a setting, acting, directing, filming and creating a soundtrack.
“Forty-eight hours isn’t a lot of time,” Knott said. “The team is under pressure - the adrenaline is flowing!”
About 50 films are screened and judged each year in Providence, and several are selected for awards like Best Film, Best Acting, Best Cinematography and Best Special Effects.
“No, we haven’t won anything,” Knott said. “We really don’t expect to. We just do it for fun. But there’s always next year!
“It’s a challenge, but the end result is something everyone has been part of, and there is a great sense of accomplishment.”
Knott, who has been at NUWC Newport for 34 years, gets that same sense of accomplishment from the many projects she has created for NUWC Newport. She is most proud of her work on two Naval Sea System Command-sponsored LDEE events.
For the 2017 event she created an entire message center for display on a massive screen (approximately 8-by-10 feet) which included speaker biographies, schedules and breakout session details and descriptions. In 2018, she was part of the video team that captured the event and worked on consolidating, organizing and packaging those many hours of video tape in post-production.
“In general, I really enjoy and am most proud of projects that are multimedia productions. Melding text, graphics, video and audio into a useful, informing product is an absolute craft, and I truly enjoy the challenges that come with such productions, so being the lead on digital signage content production has been a wonderful experience.”
NUWC Division Newport, part of the Naval Sea System Command, is one of two divisions of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. NUWC Division Newport’s mission is to provide research, development, test and evaluation, engineering and fleet support for submarines, autonomous underwater systems, undersea offensive and defensive weapons systems, and countermeasures. NUWC’s other division is located in Keyport, Washington.