Dreaming, Cell Dividing

The five paintings in this series combine the process of mitosis, or cell division, with a centered around the greek goddess . She is the goddess of necessity, a weaver and mother of the fates. Weavers have been used in many cultures to represent the cycle of life:

“ of weaving exist around the world as metaphors for creation. The spindle is often an axis mundi and its whirling whorls serve a cosmogonic function. Plato, for example, had a dream of the great goddess Ananke, “Necessity,” spinning the universe; the sun, moon, and planets were her spindle’s whorls; sirens sang through the webs of and fate that she wove, and souls endlessly moved through the strands on their way to and from death and rebirth. Many goddesses are spinners and weavers: the Fates of ancient Greece; , also of Greece; Neith of ancient Egypt; in Teutonic myth the Norns spin secret meanings into life; in the American southwest, Grandmother Spider Woman spins all life from the shimmering threads in her belly.” (Unpublished dissertation, “The feminine in zygote and syzygy: Gender studies in violence, drama, and the sacred.” and other works by the same author) Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D.

The other souls now travelled on towards a pillar of light, like a rainbow. It is connected to an enormous spindle and rests upon the knees of Ananke (necessity) and causes eight spheres of the heavens to revolve. Plato, Plato’s (book 10)

Before a cell can divide, the DNA inside of the cell nucleus must first replicate. During most of the cell cycle, the DNA is in a more relaxed state, like a bowl of spaghetti. The DNA condenses into chromosomes in preparation for cell division. The sun in the first painting, “Prophase”, of the series represents the cell nucleus, and barely visible inside the sun are the forming chromosomes (represented by human figures - the souls of soldiers in Plato’s dream). A structure called the centrosome also replicates. The spinning wheel in Ananke’s arms is modelled after the appearance of a centriole, of which there are two in a centrosome. These migrate to opposite sides of the cell, and out of them microtubules begin to grow. These are much like the threads coming out of Ananke’s wheel. In the second painting, “Metaphase”, the nucleus breaks down, the chromosomes escape and become attached to the microtubule “threads” coming out of Ananke’s wheel. This whole apparatus - the chromosomes, the microtubules and the centrosomes, is called the mitotic spindle. The chromosomes are then pulled to opposite sites of the cell, the cell pinches in the middle, and becomes two daughter cells by the last painting in the series, “Telophase”.

Across the bottom of the paintings in sepia tones are greek characters with cyclic lives. spends half the year above ground and the other half below with in the underworld. Her mother, , mourns her departure to the underworld, and so we have winter. Demeter and Persephone are together in the first painting where the cell is whole, “Prophase”. When the cell has divided into two, Persephone is with Hades in the last painting, “Telophase”. The three central paintings, “Metaphase”, “Anaphase”, and “Late Anaphase”, feature , god of wine and creativity. Dionysus was taken from his mother’s womb by who put him into his thigh. After being born from the thigh of Zeus, Dionysus lives his life in a cycle of dancing and drinking with the , then being torn apart by them and reborn in the spring. His life was a metaphor for the cutting back and regrowth of the grape vines each year.

At the borders are images of the process of cell division using a spinning disk confocal microscope by Dr. Julie Canman. The microtubules are blue and the chromosomes are red.