Janice Fischer BIO
Janice was born in New York City, grew up in New Jersey, and got to Texas as fast as she could. She is a molecular geneticist and a professor emerita in the department of Molecular Biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin. She earned her PhD in Biochemistry at Harvard University in 1988 and then did postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley and MIT before joining the faculty of UT Austin in 1993. In her research lab at UT Austin, Janice used fruit fly genetics to understand the molecular mechanisms that cells use to “talk” to each other to make biological structures like eyes.  Janice and her laboratory published numerous scientific articles on this topic, funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the American Cancer Society, and the March of Dimes. Janice taught Genetics classes to tens of thousands of UT Austin undergraduates and graduate students, for which she received numerous teaching awards, and she was the Director of the Biology Instruction Office at UT Austin. Janice is the co-author of a textbook published by McGraw-Hill Education entitled Genetics: From Genes to Genomes.
 Janice also likes to make beaded snakes.

Janice Fischer Artist Statement
Laboratory research is about careful observation and obsessive repetition. I like to make things that involve both activities. I discovered the bead-crochet rope art form on Etsy, and when I moved to Johnson City in 2016, the Texas Hill Country inspired me to use my love of beads and thread to make snakes. Artists generously shared computer software invented specifically for designing bead-crochet ropes. (The program allows you to input a flat design that it translates immediately into a cylinder. The algorithm then spits out the linear order in which to string the beads — thousands of them — so that when crocheted cylindrically, the desired pattern is achieved.) I constrain myself to designs that resemble real snakes. This constraint forces me to puzzle out how to convey the essence of a snakeskin pattern within the limited resolution of the beads in a cylinder whose diameter must be small enough to avoid implosion and to be worn as a necklace. The beads are Miyuki®️ glass rocailles.