The SciArt Team

Julia Buntaine Hoel
Founding Director
Julia Buntaine Hoel is a conceptual artist interested in the brain, and Founding Executive Director of SciArt Initiative. She holds positions at multiple academic institutions where she teaches and helps generate science-art-technology collaboration and curricula. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and Forbes, among others. Julia is based in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Kate Schwarting
​Programs Manager
Kate Schwarting is an Interdisciplinary artist from New York. Her work utilizes traditional and new media techniques to explore the intersection of art and science with an emphasis on time, process and interactivity. Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Microbiology Department at Oregon State University as well the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt. Kate is based in Long Island, New York.
​Mia Cardenas
Colloquium & Social Media Manager
Mia Cardenas is an upcoming high-school senior from the Philippines. As a BioArtist, she hopes to help bridge the engagement disparity between the public and science through the creation of art installations inspired by scientific concepts and made from biological materials. She is also the Founder of The Lilac Blog, an organization for poets, writers, and artists promoting interdisciplinary collaboration. Currently, she is working on a research project on Bioluminescence and its applications in design.
Emily Garfield
​Community Architect
​Emily Garfield is a professional artist based in New York. She works in pen and watercolor to create intricate maps of imaginary places inspired by the visual language of cartography as well as the fractal similarity that cities share with biological patterns such as cells and neurons. She has held workshops at art venues across the country, from the DeCordova and Peabody Essex museums in the Boston area to the Snite Museum of Art of Notre Dame in Indiana.
Guest curators
Isabel Beavers
Isabel Beavers is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles, CA. Her work explores ecologies, examines environmental histories and postulates about climate futures through multimedia installation + new media. Beavers’ work has been presented, exhibited, and screened at New York Hall of Science (2020), CultureHub LA (2020), SUPERCOLLIDER Gallery (2020), MIT Museum (2019), Icebox Project Space (2019), Framingham State University (2018), Humbolt-Universitat zu Berlin Thaer-Institut (2018), Mountain Time Arts (2017), Emerson Media Arts Center (2017) among others. She has held workshops at the Hammer Museum (2020) and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (2019). She holds an MFA from the SMFA at Tufts University and a BS from the University of Vermont. She is currently a 2019-20 Resident Artist with CultureHub LA and 2020 SciArt Ambassador with SUPERCOLLIDER Gallery.
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Tarah Rhoda
Tarah Rhoda is an artist and educator based in NYC, where she runs the School of Visual Art’s BioArt Lab, a BSL-1 laboratory that provides artists with the tools of biotechnology and fosters creative applications. Through investigations of the body as a miniature world, her art practice yanks at the sense of self in nature’s reflection. Her recent work employs the physical principle of wetness as a metaphor for empathy, social permeability, and eco-connectivity. She received her BFA (2010) and MFA (2020) from SVA and also studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.  Her work has been exhibited in New York, Denver, Detroit, Toronto, Mexico City, Lisbon, Berlin, Eindhoven and featured in National Geographic, the Guardian, and CBSNews.

Board of Directors

Julia Buntaine Hoel (President)
Kate Schwarting (Secretary)
Jody Rasch (Treasurer)
Marnie Benney
​William Myers

Where you can find us

While SciArt Initiative does not have one designated location, you can find us at our pop-up art shows and associated events. Stay tuned by joining our mailing list below.