Mara G. Haseltine

Mara Gercik Haseltine (born 22 February 1971) is an American artist and environmental activist who has shown and worked internationally. She collaborates with scientists and engineers to create her work, which focuses on the link between human's shared cultural and biological evolution.

Mara G. Haseltine was born in Boston and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of American geneticist Dr. William A. Haseltine, a Professor of bio chemistry at Harvard University known for his work on HIV/AIDS and on the Human Genome Project, and Patricia E. Gercik, a novelist, educator and managing director of the MIT Japan Program.She has one younger brother, Alex G. Haseltine and is related to William Stanley Haseltine, a well-known landscape painter.

Education and teaching

Haseltine attended the Commonwealth School in Boston, Massachusetts. She completed her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College with a double major in studio art and art history in 1992. She was mentored there by Michael Rees, known for his work in digital fabrication methods. Mara received a scholarship to attend the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, CA and graduated with two master's degrees in sculpture and new genres in 1997. She studied extensively with internet pioneer and video artist Sharon Grace and performance artist Tony Labat. In 1992, she was awarded a scholarship at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. In 2006, she engaged the Global Coral Reef Alliance to study innovative reef restoration methods in Gili Trawangan. In 2012, she received a scholarship to attend the Aspen Institute Leadership Program.

Haseltine has taught as a visiting or adjunct professor at the Smithsonian National Museum for Museums of the Caribbean, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Corcoran Museum of Art,the Eugene Lang College at the New School, and now teaches at Art Researchers Science (ARS) Collaborator and Contributor where she was involved in founding the International Art Degree.

Early career and influences

At the age of eighteen she worked for feminist French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle to create elaborate mosaics in Normandy, France and build large-scale public sculpture the Tarot Garden in Tuscany, Italy. She was influenced by Niki's large scale often playful work and has been called "the Nicki de Saint Phalle of Genomic Art". After college, she worked with the Smithsonian and the Museum of Trinidad and Tobago to create natural history displays in the Port of Spain Trinidad. She continued her work with the Museum of Trinidad and Tobago under the directorship of Dr. Claire Broadridge throughout her graduate studies.

In 1998 Haseltine became a "V.I.P. Lifetime Coney Island Mermaid" for designing, directing and choreographing the winning float for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in collaboration with the comic book artist and performer Dame Darcy.

In 2003 Haseltine created the ‘Waltz of the Polypeptides’, a large-scale sculpture inspired by the biological process undergone during construction of proteins within a cell. The artwork stretches eighty-four-foot across an outdoor space on the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory campus in Long Island. During the undertaking Haseltine developed a novel technique for taking sub-molecular data, used in bioinformatics, and massaging it through a series of computer programs to produce a usable form that could be milled or rapidly-prototyped. She went on to use this process repeatedly in her work, combining scientific data from the microscopic world and transposing it into three-dimensional sculptures.

Another of Haseltine's large-scale sculptures of note is "SARS Inhibited", which depicts the active cleft of the SARS Virus with a stone path that represents the protease halting catalyzation. "SARS Inhibited" was built in 2006 on the Biolpolis Biotech Mecca courtyard in Singapore.

“Homologous Hope," built in 2014, is based on the BRCA2 protein, which, in a healthy cell, prevents breast, ovarian and prostate cancer. The sculpture hangs suspended from the ceiling of the Basser Research Center atrium with an LED display depicting homologous recombination, a process which broken strands of DNA. The project was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly at the University of Pennsylvania.

Haseltine's later work addresses the growing threat the planet due to anthropogenic climate change. In 2006, Along with artist, film maker and environmental activist Nora Maccoby she co-founded "The Green Salon," an environmental solutions-based think tank based in Washington D.C. devoted to developing relationships between policy makers and NGO's. She worked alongside the Global Coral Reef Alliance and the Small Island States or SIDS at the United Nations to help foster sustainable solutions for countries most vulnerable to climate change. Concerned with water quality land habitat restoration in New York Harbor in 2007 she created a science-based sculpture and experiment "Transcriptease." The project was New York City's first solar powered oyster reef and Spartina marsh. Soon after, she created several "barefoot" experiments to test sustainable substrate for oysters in conjunction with the New School for Social Research, The NY/NJ Baykeepers and Cornell Marine Exchange in Long Island.

In 2011 Mara did an artist in residency on the Tara Schooner of Tara expedition, which was conducting a worldwide study of planktonic ecosystems and their relationship to atmospheric climate change. The project was led by chief scientist Eric Karsenti, winner of "la médaille d'or du CNRS". Mara was awarded the honor of "Return of the Flag" for this work by the Explorers Club.

Inspired by microplastic strands mixed with delicate planktonic forms in samples ascertained aboard the Tara expedition, Haseltine created a mixed-media performance entitled "La Bohème: A Portrait of Today Oceans in Peril.” The central sculpture in this work was a Tintinnid plankton fashioned from uranium-infused glass ensnared in a piece of micro-degraded plastic to which a live opera performance occurred and a Rodolfo sang to his "sick love". The installation debuted at the Explorers Club headquarters in New York on the Tara Expedition in 2012 and was shown at the Agnes b. Gallery and Boutique in New York City as well as parts of it being shown at the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco at the Blue Ocean Film Festival and at the Oceans Pavilion in Paris for the COP21 in 2015 during the Paris Climate Accords.

In 2012, Haseltine participated in a show entitled "Earth Consciousness" curated by the Japanese futuristic artist Mariko Mori in the tropical islands of Okinawa Japan where she debuted her plans for a coral reef entitled "Enchanted Star Sand" based on a ctenophore plankton and local mythology. Upon meeting and interacting with the female Japanese Shamans of Okinawa, Haseltine's early interest in Shintoism, the original nature worshipping religion of Japan, was re-kindled. She created a body of work entitled Supernatural and Futurenatural in 2015 consisting of photography and sculpture within which there is a moment of awareness called chinkon where the spirit of the rocks or nature reveals itself. This system of interaction and awareness was reinforced by the atmospheric science of James Lovelock who put forth the Gaia Hypothesis that all of nature is connected in one living breathing organism or life force within the biosphere and further enforced by the belief of Gold Winning scientist Eric Karsenti that in fact the entire planet and all the organisms within it operate much like a living cell floating in space.

Since 2008, Haseltine has been the Art Director of G.A.I.A. or Geotherapy Art Institute Associates.