Currently based in Providence, RI.
Available for illustration and teaching opportunities. Reach me at maramenahan@gmail.com for more information and my CV.

I am interested in disrupting human/nature binary thinking. Working with watery media, glass, fabric, and video projection, I use layers and translucency 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. Bodies with holes. Bodies that leak. Bodies contaminated and contained.

From my experience working alongside scientists, as both a botanical illustrator and a technician at an atmospheric research station, my work also responds to scientific ways of knowing. I collage scientific and personal imagery to question how media and imaging technology such as microscopes, satellites, infrared cameras and cinematic devices expand our sense of self and time.

In my work as a botanical/scientific illustrator, I value images made slowly, by hand, informed by my own sensory participation with the more-than-human world. I am especially concerned with documenting threatened lifeforms and evolutionary variation as a result of human activity, and in using sequential images to animate change over time.

Select Clients:
United States Botanic Garden
Golden Traingle Business District
Wild Confluence Media
Bikepacking.com
Montana Audubon

Teaching Experience:
Wild Rockies Field Institute (University of Montana)
Rhode Island School of Design 
Wilderness Institute (University of Montana)

Workshops:
Brown University
Rhode Island School of Design
Wilderness Leadership Experience for Rhodes Scholars 
RISD Museum
United States Botanic Garden
Tenekee Springs Public Library
Bainbridge Artisan Network

Residencies:
Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska
Salmon House Creative Residency, Tenekee Springs, Alaska
Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island, Washington

Honors:
+ RISD Fellowship, funding for 2 year MFA degree  
+ Bunyan Velo Expedition Fund Grant 2,000 mi cycling/botanical illustration project, Baja California, Mexico
+ Botanical Artists for Environment and Education Individual Grant, U.S. Botanic Garden, Washington, D.C.
+ Truman Scholar, National congressional scholarship for graduate school
+ Udall Scholar, National congressional scholarship for environmental work

Education:
MFA Rhode Island School of Design 2024 | BA Environmental Studies, BS Geography, University of Montana 2015