Mara Menahan is a visual artist and science illustrator working to unsettle human/nature binary thinking. She grew up in Helena, Montana surrounded by extended family whose livelihoods are tied to land, inspiring her to study Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Montana. While there, she taught herself science illustration and after graduating moved to Washington D.C. where she became the full-time botanical illustrator for the U.S. Botanic Gardens from 2015-2017. Mara then started freelancing and moved her studio into the field, using the visual language of natural history illustration to document landscapes threatened by extractive industry, human infrastructure and climate change. During these years, she also worked seasonally as a science technician, repairing atmospheric instruments and collecting climate data at a National Science Foundation research station located at the center of the Greenland ice sheet. Her artistic work has since shifted in response to both scientific and embodied ways of knowing and in 2023, Mara returned to the east coast to pursue her Masters in Fine Art at the Rhode Island School of Design with support of the Truman Scholarship. As an artist, Mara uses watery media, glass, fabric, and video projection to implicate the observer in what is observed, creating low-tech, poetic interfaces that blur boundaries between analog and digital, feral and domestic, the environment and our bodies.

She has brought artistic research methods to outdoor, experiential learning courses at the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Montana, and led public workshops while in residence at the Bloedel Reserve in Washington, the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and the U.S. Botanic Garden in D.C. Mara joins WRFI as an instructor for the Southwest Climate Studio Art course.