Photo by Dana Johnson
Artist Mary Ellen Scherl's sculpture, The Ladder, was recently unveiled in the courtyard outside the Robinson Research Building. The sculpture depicts cherubs ascending and descending a winding strand of DNA. Based on the biblical story of Jacob’s ladder, Sherl compared the cherubs to nucleic acids going up and down sugar-phosphate strands carrying genetic information. “The angels and the nucleic acids both act like messengers,” she said.