Researchers

Maria Renée Johnson is an artist, writer, watershed worker, and ecological grief-tender. She has spent almost her whole life in the Sonoran Desert, both in the US and México. The foundation of all of her work is connection and collaboration with the natural world and a vision toward more justice for all.

Creatively, Maria’s work explores animism, ecological connection, and dreaming. Most is in the form of black and white ink illustration using a stippling technique, which is itself a reflection on connectivity. Other mediums include printmaking, mural painting, and writing. Her work has been shown at the University of Arizona’s Museum of Art, Saguaro National Park, the Natural History Institute, and the Corvallis Arts Center as well as internationally published including in the Dark Mountain Project, in scientific journals including Cultural Geographies in Practice, magazines such as Edible Baja Arizona, and online spaces including Terrain.org.

In addition, Maria works with the Santa Cruz Watershed Collaborative to bring people, organizations, and agencies together as well as co-leads a local drought-planning initiative in the watershed. She also leads community-based grief circles working with somatic, creative, ritual, and ecological frameworks. In the past, she has studied community resilience and sense of place on the Oregon Coast, the socio-ecological impacts of shrimp trawling in Sonora, México, as well as photographed and interviewed small-scale fishermen in the Gulf of California.

She received her BA from Prescott College in Environmental Studies and MS from Oregon State University in Marine Resource Management.