Picturing DNA
An Interview with Helen Donis-Keller

[Helen Donis-Keller is an artist who interrupted her studies of art with twenty years as a molecular biologist. She has been keeping a foot in both camps for the last few years, with a studio and a laboratory in St. Louis, where she was Professor of Genetics at Washington University, and in Boston, where she is now studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. A long-term project is a series she calls "Helen Heads," interpretations of her own image derived originally from a picture taken for identity purposes for Sam's Club, a membership discount store.]

Q: Your descriptions of what a genotype is and what a phenotype is, are nice and clear. But I was wondering about your image. When you're playing around with this scanned image, your photo from your membership card, how does that echo a genotype?

Donis-Keller: Well, the phenotype is how a genetic potential of a genotype is modified through environment, experience, and so on. In this way, the initial image-the different resolutions of the genotype that's represented in the Sam's Club image-are modified in various ways so that the image is constantly changing, as we all are, in time. And it becomes a very complex image. I am constantly modifying, so that represents the forces of the environment and culture working on an inherited component of the person.

Q: Have you considered modifying that image with other images?

Donis-Keller: Well, I did take it a step toward that. One of the most recent Helen heads is one that I did in needlepoint. It reminded me very much of what my mother used to do-the needlepoint work that she did. And my grandmother used to embroider. It reminded me of that experience with them. I used to sit with them in the garden in the summer and they would embroider or they would knit, and I would read. We were all together. And that was, of course, traditionally women's work. The first serious drawing that I did was of my grandmother, based on a photograph of when she was about eighteen. And then I did a drawing of my daughter. And then I proceeded to do other portraits of people I cared about. So for me, making a Helen head that is a needlepoint version is evocative of that period.

Q: So the portrait [of your grandmother] led you to do your self-portrait, the Helen heads?

Donis-Keller: Yes. I believe it did. I think all artists do self-portraits-number one, because we're there, and also it's a means of self-exploration.

Q: The Helen heads series is ongoing. Is that correct?

Donis-Keller: Yes. I started a new series of very large charcoal drawings that are based on the migraine headaches I suffer from, as my grandmother did. As a part of the diagnostic procedure, I had CT scans and MRIs . These drawings that I'm working on now are a combination of the CT scans and a portrait of my head. I'm working them together, still following the idea of the Helen heads, but now with more interiority.

Q. Are you working in a lab at the present time?

Donis-Keller: I'm finishing some papers from my previous lab group. But I'm not actively working in any lab now.

Q: Are you leaving the world of science permanently for the world of art?

Donis-Keller: Yes, I am.

Q: What have your scientific colleagues had to say about leaving the lab?

Donis-Keller: The people who know me well are not surprised. Several have expressed some wishful thinking on their own part. I think they would like to follow their dreams too, but haven't. It's been a mixed reaction.

Q: I wonder if you could explain the genesis of your shifting your priorities from science to art.

Donis-Keller: I guess that occurred over, probably, a five-year period. It must have been around '94 [when] I began my journey back into making art via photography. For a birthday present, I got myself a high-quality camera and began seriously going out to take images. When I would travel, of course, I would always have my camera with me. It became a way for me to make art that was reasonably convenient. And then I took up drawing again. I spent four years in a university as an undergraduate art major in graphic design and photography before I got into science. As part of the curriculum, I took several courses in freehand drawing; I probably took four semesters in drawing. And then, when I was a postdoc in molecular biology [at Harvard], I would occasionally take evening college courses at the School of the Museum of Fine Art. And when I was on sabbatical, I took a couple of courses at Washington University in the school of art-two drawing classes and one printmaking class.

Q: Helen, it sounds to me like the newest work is stimulated by your knowledge of science. Do you see this work as having any continuity with your scientific enterprise? Or is this entirely aesthetic-whatever the genesis of the images might have been?

Donis-Keller: I was a scientist for more than twenty years, and it's just so much a part of who I am. I was drawn to science, I think, because of the rationality of it. It would be difficult for me to think that I would just turn my back on a way of living, a way of being. And so, for me, the science is so much a part of who I am. And when you're an artist, I think you have to draw on your internal reserves. That, to me, is science. I continue to love to read about science, and I go to lectures from time to time. So it's very much an active part of my experience. And I intend to continue grappling with the notion of genotype and phenotype. I've started doing some music composition. I think the ability to employ sound and music along with video and drawings really gives a full palette for expression of complex ideas, which I think are maybe a little more problematic with simply two-dimensional images.

Q: Has your return to art school made you more skeptical about the way non-scientists understand science?

Donis-Keller: Yes. I must say, having been in art school, and having come in contact with people who don't embrace science, it's been quite a jolt. And I think that's solidified my feelings about rationality and science.

Q: Do you find that the artists you've met who have no exposure to science are much less literate in science than the scientists you know are literate about art?

Donis-Keller: Well, it cuts both ways. I would say, at a first approximation, yes. Most artists that I meet have so little grounding in scientific thinking. They're so extraordinarily limited in their ability to understand scientific ideas that it is, I think, extremely difficult, even if they're willing, to get any depth of understanding. So that's a problem. Whereas, I think scientists can appreciate art-certainly as a viewer-much more easily. The access is easier; one can go to museums and read the wall labels and get some kind of education. There's a lot available to learn about art. But to have a deep appreciation of what's current in art and to have the sophistication that most contemporary artists have, I think, is very difficult for most scientists. The worlds are fairly separate.

Q: There's got to be a deep aesthetic response at some point to good science, don't you think?

Donis-Keller: Absolutely. But I haven't seen any interest in exploring that amongst any of the artists I know. It makes me sad, because we traditionally have looked to our artists as interpreters. And how can you interpret something you don't understand? So I think it's an [important] issue. One thinks about the genome project and all that that will lead to in the coming decades. In Boston, we're expecting demonstrations. There's the biotechnology conference that's taking place, and there's a group that's coming to demonstrate against biotechnology. That's like demonstrating against rocks or something. I mean, what are their issues?

Q: Yes, what are their issues?

Donis-Keller: I don't know. The news media here says these people are opposed to "genetic engineering." Well, you know, that covers a lot. I think it's really bizarre that these same people do not seem to be opposed to these nutritional supplements, which are unregulated and clearly injure people. They are full of mysticism and gobbledygook, and at the same time, are opposed to what is a more regulated industry-biotechnology. Again, I think it plays to ignorance and a lack of rationality.

Q: Do you find that most of the artists you know are part of this opposition to what they call bioengineering?

Donis-Keller: I've found a very strong bias against science and genetic engineering, in almost a comical way.

Q: What do you think it is that makes them so knee-jerk anti-science?

Donis-Keller: I think it's the idea of manipulation that is beyond their control, and the notion that it's a corporate-sponsored activity-that "these companies" are doing these evil things. I think it's not very well thought out. That's my guess as to why people become so angry about this notion. Genetic recombination goes on every time people have offspring. Where do they think domesticated plants and animals came from? It's just absurd. Just a little walk back through history would straighten out some of these notions.

Q: But there are people who will say, "It's quite different to move a gene from a plant to an animal, and vice versa."

Donis-Keller: Yes. But show me the evidence that there is serious danger here.

Q: The only evidence they've shown has been within the plant community, manipulating genes so that--oh, you might eat rice and find that you have eaten some nut that you're allergic to.

Donis-Keller: Yes. I suppose for rare cases there are some issues. But there are more serious issues to worry about, like antibiotics in animal feed.

Q: Yes, exactly.

Donis-Keller: It's a matter of weighing these risks. And I think just probability and statistics totally elude a good number of people in our world. Getting things in perspective, I think, is really crucial. It's a very elitist argument to argue against genetic engineering of plants when we have a world to feed.

Q: But agribusiness giants have been rather clumsy in their efforts to manipulate the market.

Donis-Keller: But to condemn a whole enterprise based on some misstep. Again, show me the evidence that there's a problem here, and I'll be happy to consider it. But I don't see the evidence.

Q: And if I understood you correctly, you are dismayed by the fact that even some of these artists who are addressing scientific issues seem to be less informed about the science than they might have been?

Donis-Keller: Yes. The problem for me is that artists tend to focus on the superficial issues. Or they don't really see the very interesting complexity, and tend to make things very one-sided.

Q: Do you think art has a didactic or pedagogic role in general in this area, or in any area?

Donis-Keller: I think, because artists are interpreters, they teach lessons in some ways. So as a communicator, yes. "Teaching role" is perhaps too strong a term, but it's a way of communicating to non-specialists. I think it's a very useful role that the artist can play.

Q: What do you feel your role is?

Donis-Keller: Well, I see myself as an artist who understands science. As an artist, I draw on my reserves as a scientist and as an individual with some experience in the world.

Q: Do you have a community of artists with whom you feel a commonality? Or are you building one?

Donis-Keller: My life as an artist has been relatively short compared to my life as a scientist. So I would say I have a small group of people I can talk to about these ideas. But it's a very small segment at this time.

Q: What kind of response do you get to your work from your fellow artists?

Donis-Keller: I think they don't understand what I'm trying to do. I've found in art school-at least the art school that I'm at-that there's a tendency to want to be very unsubtle, to be political, to be very basic and emotion-filled. Subtlety is not a highly prized quality. I think some art schools-and some segment of the art school that I go to-has been very much damaged by the post-Modern point of view. Subscribers to post-Modernism hold sway there, and that's very bad for science.

Q: There seems to be a growing body of artists in various media who are attracted to the-what should I call it?-metaphoric potential, I guess, of the genome project. Do you think it's fair to say that there's something in the momentousness, or the potential impact, of this project?

Donis-Keller: Oh, absolutely. And it's unavoidable. You know, it's in the news every day about how some gene predicts some behavior or manifestation of a disease, and that genes are very powerful. This whole notion of genetic determinism, I think, is an idea that's surfaced through the print media [and] in news reports. So it's something that artists have become aware of. Again, I think it's unfortunate that their awareness has been from secondary sources and that the education is so limited that it's hard for them to get beyond that. It's clear in some things, such as DNA fingerprinting. There's something chilling about the absolute power of DNA in distinguishing one individual from another and being able to identify and track people. On the other hand, it's very liberating. So these ideas, I think, are ripe for an artist.

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Picturing DNA by Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles & Marilyn Nissenson
Copyright © 2000 Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles & Marilyn Nissenson
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