Mary Cost

Mary Cost’s Artist Statement

My art is about strength, beauty, and the things we count on to endure. This may be a sun-topped mountain range, an expansive desert landscape, or the solid adobe walls that surround us here in New Mexico — the play of light and shadow in their angles, and the way their pueblo-inspired geometries pile up against the sky.

I favor strong contrasts: light and dark, bright and dull, angles against curves, and serenity amongst turbulence. I dye my own yarns based on Southwestern rust-reds, golden yellows, chamisa greens, and the ever-changing array of blues and violets that wheel overhead. The way I use these colors in tapestry is inspired by such early Expressionist painters as Vasily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, and Franz Mark.

Mary Cost’s Artist Biography

In the early 1990s, I retired from a career in advertising and publishing in New York City and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was here that I discovered tapestry, first as a collector, then as a designer/weaver — and I never looked back.

I was fortunate in the opportunity to study with superb tapestry artists here — notably James Koehler, my teacher and mentor from 2002 until his untimely death in 2011, and Karen Benjamin, friend, guide and advisor to this day. My tapestry education has been further enhanced over the years by opportunities to participate in workshops lead by Jean Pierre Larochette, Yael Lurie, Susan Iverson, Archie Brennan, Susan Martin-Maffei, Mary Zicafoose, Joan Baxter and Jane Kidd, among others —many, but not all of these workshops under the auspices of ATA.