Maria Kovacs’ Statement

In this series of work, Pushing the Envelope, my focus is the human impact we have on our surroundings. Large environmental altering events, such as the destruction of cod fishing to New England, micro harvesting of moss and the ensuing cost to the natural world, and the method of tree cutting using multiple, land slashing logging roads, are the subjects of this work. I use a business envelope format to communicate how corporate use of resources for profit is at odds with our stewardship of the environment. The interior patterning of the tapestries, as in the security patterns in business envelopes, enforces how profit patterns our relationship to resources.

Maria Kovacs’ Biography

I started my journey as an artist using other media before exploring tapestry more completely in my studies for an MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. Using drawing, embroidery, and mixed media in addition and sometimes combined with tapestry, I find expression. I completed an artist residency in Newfoundland, worked as a TA for Jon Eric Riis at Haystack with the Jack Lenor Larsen Scholarship Fund, received the Dendel Scholarship from the Handweavers Guild of America in addition to a Graduate Student Assistantship at VCU. I currently work full-time to keep body and soul together, show my work competitively, teach tapestry on occasion, and live in the woods in Maine.