Kara Bender was born in West Palm Beach, Florida and currently resides in Greenville, South Carolina. She enjoys experimenting with art making materials and is familiar with a variety of mediums and techniques. Kara originally had a background in graphic design, but quickly became interested in studio arts. She focused on mixed media and painting techniques while she obtained her B.F.A at the University of North Carolina Asheville campus, and would later work on shaped canvases, sculpture, and printmaking techniques while obtaining her M.F.A at Western Carolina University. Her current work involves mixed media drawings that include hidden images and reflections. They are often layered, cut through, burned, and twisted to reveal unexpected images or associations. Much of her work revolves around North American cultural studies and phenomena in the United States, and often goes into things like myths, proverbs, and her personal anxieties. Kara is neurodivergent and her work is often heavily overworked and detailed to reflect the way she processes the environment around her. She teaches art and art history at Greenville Tech and the University of South Carolina’s Upstate campus, drawing and advanced drawing courses at the Spartanburg Art Museum, and a weekly painting and mixed media class at the Cascades retirement community. In her spare time, she is an aquarist, aquatic plant enthusiast, and the pellet god for a colony of fancy shrimp.