Penny McCarthy

'On DNA First Draft (facsimile)'
2003
Pencil drawings
3.6m x 38cm

Dear Penny

A little more information for you and some ideas for your work. If you can get away from Crick’s stuff, one idea was to make a picture of the stages that DNA must undergo within the cell to be packaged into chromosomes. The length of DNA in one chromosome is about 10 centimeters, say, and it must be packaged into the minute size of a chromosome. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, so the total length of DNA in the nucleus of a human cell is about 5 meters long...I believe that the average is about 3 meters for all mammals taken together...does this make sense??? Let me know. I am trying to find the right picture for you to make into art. I am not sure that what I propose is what they want you to do, but since you have no ideas of your own yet...here it goes!!
Much love, Dad.

On Saturdays as a child I would hang out in the laboratory where my father worked. The lab was in a tall building full of corridors lined with shelves that contained animal cages, lenses, glass jars and equipment. In one room were fridges with animals in them, lots of white rats and rabbits that lay sleeping in their blanket of frost. As a child I was fascinated by their numbers, their stench and their deadness. This room was always cold and smelled of dry ice. In another room were cages and cages of animals, mostly mice, specially bred for complicated purposes. I would play with them or take them home for the odd weekend.

Dear Penny
As far I know, Crick did the structure of DNA, then worked on the genetic code, and finally went into Neurobiology, but I do not know what he did there, may be very interesting.
More tomorrow,
Dad.

My father worked alongside Watson and Crick in the 1960s. He has stories about the discovery of the double helix, stories about scientists who plunder other scientists’ research, stories about Crick and his flirtation with my mother, stories about parties and ladies jumping out of cakes for Crick’s birthday, stories about Watson always tripping over his shoelaces. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s my father worked on DNA so as a child my life sort of fitted in around this obsession. In our house his clones lived in the fridge and in searching for the butter you always ran the risk of knocking them over. For me the letters D, N, A are the fragments of an overheard conversation, incompletely understood. My parents’ vague recollections parallel history passing, changing every moment.
My own sense of the time is compiled of images, anecdotes and scraps of information;

•A memory of cocktails and parties in the sunshine
•An image of various chemical marvels and microscopic
observations
•A picture of the annotated text from Watson and Crick’s first draft for the Nature article
•A picture of Crick walking along the beach at La Jolla
•A chart of genetic inheritance
•A photograph of numerous tiny test tubes containing frozen clones
•A children’s book called 'Travels with Dr. Crick'

Penny
It may be good to look at old Scientific Americans; they have great drawings. My own figures are very specific things. Look at that article I mentioned if you can. There are also great figures in Molecular Biology textbooks. If you do meet Crick tell him hello.
Goodnite, Dad.

The perspective offered by my own recollections and those of my parents has contributed to my approach to considering the subject of DNA. This autobiographical connection allows a direct, unmediated connection with the source material, thereby extending its parameters. In the past when I have worked with scientific texts the footnotes referring to my father’s contribution have offered insights into my own history.

Nature no. 4356
25 April 1953
The drawing is of the Watson and Crick paper in Nature 1953. The same issue also contains Rosalind Franklin’s X-rays. The language, the qualities of the print, even the typeface are redolent of their time. The paper almost smells of Cambridge in the 50s. It is surprising how tentative Watson and Crick sound, as if they are not sure of the veracity of their findings. In this instance context is everything – the location of the text itself within the volume of Nature, sandwiched between Rosalind Franklin’s work and another, less familiar research project. The act of copying and re-presenting this material emphasizes its iconic aspects and location in history. This allows a contemplation of the original and an investigation of its fluctuating meaning. It also materializes the essence of the document in the present.

First Draft (Facsimile)
This is a drawing of Watson and Crick’s first draft of their findings prior to publishing in Nature. Several drafts were produced and this is a copy of the first one. These are located among the Crick papers at the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. The original is on buff-coloured paper and typed, with pencil annotations and scribbles. I was interested in the quality of marks and marginalia, the crossings out and alterations to the text. Sometimes there is only an arrow or a vertical line beside a paragraph. The papers are private workings. The pencil marks signify the thought processes of Watson and Crick and re-presentation exaggerates their lure. Interventions such as these that allow us to reflect on personal responses are hard to find among such dry discourse. Somehow you sympathize with the personal tone although you may not understand the science. The absence of certainty and the almost schoolboy handwriting are at odds with the staggering scientific breakthrough that is being drafted. The revelation of ordinary humanity can act both to enhance the romance of the discovery and to disappoint subscribers to the myth of intellectual brilliance.

PM