Caption: Tera and Christine (both smiling) at the East Bay Zine Fest, Dec 2017
An Interview With Christine Liu of Two Photon Art and The Stem Squad
In the cultural imagination, science and art are opposing fields, with no overlap in techniques or practitioner. But Christine Liu, a fourth-year graduate student studying neuroscience in the Lammel lab at UC Berkeley, is proof of just how wrong this stereotype is. Using techniques like optogenetics, which allows scientists to turn “on” and “off” genetically-modified neurons and ion channels with light, she studies how nicotine addiction changes the brain, probing what neural cell populations are responsible for the positive and negative feedback loops associated with nicotine. As accomplished outside of the lab as she is in it, Liu is the co-founder, along with Tera Johnson, of the Two Photon Art collective. The two make beautiful and informative zines about scientific topics ranging from volcanoes to prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Liu also created the social media collective, which currently boasts a Facebook group and Instagram page, “The Stem Squad,” a place for women working in, and interested in, STEM to come together, support each other, and connect with others in their field. Because of her prowess in science and art, Liu was a runner-up in the Search for Hidden Figures contest. Liu was kind enough to sit down with me, and talk to me about her work with the Two Photon Art Collective and The Stem Squad (questions and answers have been edited for clarity).
Soleil: Could you tell me a little bit about your background in science, and how you got interested in neuroscience specifically? Were you always sort of drawn to the field or did you come to it after a certain experience?
Christine: I started getting really into neuroscience my senior year of high school. People were trying to figure out what college they wanted to go to, what major they wanted to pursue, and I was always good at science but I never sort of saw myself as a scientist. I was gifted a few books by friends, one of which was the Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks, as well as The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. Usually, even today, I’ll read about 3/4ths of a book, and I just won’t be able to bring myself to finish it. For some reason, I’ll get bored of it. But these were two books that really stuck with me, especially the idea that our brain is involved in the control of our lives, and that missing even just a small chunk of it can alter a human’s ability to go through life the same way that others do. I ended up going to University of Oregon, which has a very robust neuroscience research core, and I was able to start doing neuroscience just a few months into my freshman year and I haven’t stopped since. I feel very lucky I was able to start doing research so early in a field I love. I just kind of stumbled upon it; it was never really a mission of mine. Even going to pursue my Ph.D. wasn’t really a mission either; it just seemed like the next logical step.
S: What does science-art means to you? What are you trying to accomplish with the art you do?
C: Fundamentally, art for me is something that takes the pressure off of other aspects of my life. Its something I really enjoy doing. Even before I started Two Photons with Tera, I really enjoyed going home after a long day in lab and painting. My friend Tera, who I met doing a summer research program, and I do Two Photon Art together. It’s grown very organically based on who we are. We’re both women of color who do research and science, but didn’t always grow up being fed this (kind of) information. Science was never something I saw myself doing necessarily, which I think might be because I never had much access to this world until I became a part of it serendipitously. One of the main goals we have is to increase access to science, especially for people who don’t really identify with it. There’s this dichotomy that people often fall into that you’re either creative and artsy or you’re analytical and scientific, and oftentimes people put themselves into one box and forget to explore other sides of them. Sooner or later people forget they have that capability. So some of the work we try to do is to remind people you can be both, and you can be proud of both. We try to choose interesting topics that will reel people in who wouldn’t normally be interested, or might be intimidated by science. We make pins because of a slightly selfish motive. We were getting really active in a zine community full of artists and creative people who get to wear their passion on their sleeve. A lot of them screen print their own t-shirts, or wear enamel pins of stuff that they love. There wasn’t a lot (of enamel pins) for science, so we created them. Really, the fundamental thing is that we do the art for ourselves, but we’ve found a lot of opportunities along the way to make science a little more inclusive and welcoming to other people.
S: What was the first thing you guys created together?
C: It was the volcanoes zine, because we were in Nicaragua (together) where there are tons of volcanoes. We were hiking on volcanoes, and we were swimming in lakes with volcanic ash all over them, and we took the opportunity to be where we were and to try to disseminate the information we were learning a little more widely. We’ve grown a lot since then in terms of citing our sources, and formatting and illustration, so it’s kind of fun to look back at that one. We were just doing it for fun, and wanted to find a way to keep in touch with each other, and a driving force to hold us accountable in making art. We started it for fun, so we’ll stop doing it if it’s not fun anymore.
S: Could you tell me a little about how you started The Stem Squad, and what exactly you’ve done with it so far? How does one get involved with it?
C: So I’ll start with your last point, I would love for you to join the group. We have an Instagram page where we have the most followers, but most of the support we have occurs in the Facebook group, which has almost 800 members now. It started because I started to get more active on Instagram, with my personal account and with the Two Photon account, and I noticed that there were a handful of really expressive, honest, women in STEM who were telling the stories of their lives, and who were unafraid to embrace their femininity. I thought that was such a cool community that I really wanted to be a part of and foster connections with. We made a Facebook group, and people started inviting their own friends, and we made an Instagram page. With the Instagram page, we let people in the community take over for a week and post whatever they want about their work, their background, and it’s just grown exponentially over time. It’s really amazing. It's a very organic, pure kind of community. I don’t have to do anything to advertise it. It’s just grown from people who stumbled upon it and found that they really want to be apart of it, and there’s very little that I have to do in terms of administration to keep things caring and kind, because people in the group are so intrinsically nice and supportive and creative. I always feel weird when people give me credit for founding it, because all I did was name it and create a logo for it, but really it’s all the people inside it that do all of the work. Anyone can join, anyone who identifies as a woman, or a girl, or female in science and STEM, especially if they are interested in joining a caring community and providing resources for others as well.
S: I really like the way that you talk about it, it seems very caring, and the way you guys center care is very nice, especially since science is seen in some ways, I guess correctly, as kind of this one-man, often white, for themselves, hypercompetitive world. Community can be such an important starting point in so many things
C: Absolutely. I didn't realize how much I needed this community until I had it. It’s been really amazing seeing all the beautiful things that have come to fruition from this community. Tons of people meet up that found each other through the group. People who have started podcasts have found guests through the group, and everyone is really in there to support each other. It’s a community founded on support and collaboration, and there’s no place for competition at all. This is a place we want to be safe and free to talk about things that might be taboo to talk about elsewhere. This is just how women in STEM want to interact with each other; it’s full of love.
S: Are you working on anything in particular right now?
C: We are always working on like 3 things at a time. It’s actually pretty overwhelming because we have so many ideas, and we can’t wait to get them done, and sometimes people approach us with things we just can’t pass (up on). So one zine we are really close to being done with is a collaboration with an artist called Natelle Draws Stuff, and she does a lot of enamel pins and will donate some of the proceeds to conservation efforts. We are making a zine with her called “Same Difference”, which is about convergent and divergent evolution, and why we see so many kinds of animals that fly, but also why closely related animals have evolved different functions.
If you want to learn more about Christine Liu and the art and science she does, check out her Twitter and her webpage. To learn more about her and Tera’s zine collective, check out Two Photon Art’s webpage and Patreon/Etsy.
