People

Kristen Letts Kovak’s artworks balance opposing forces to arrive at states of perpetual becoming. In her practice, she reflects on the uncertainties of chronic illness and disability, reframing divergence and disruption as catalysts for possibility. Her drawings and paintings occupy indeterminate psychological spaces and shift out of alignment, foiling recognition. “What might once be seen as irregular or incomplete becomes, in Kovak’s vision, a celebration of persistence and possibility: bodies that take up space, defy explanation, and exist fully in their own mysterious order.” —Stella Witcher

Her work has been shown in over a hundred exhibitions spanning galleries, art centers, universities, and a dozen museums, including the Muskegon Museum of Art, University of Central Florida, SPACE gallery, The Center for Contemporary Art, Metrospace, Dairy Arts Center, Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Wildling Art Museum, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Erie Art Museum, Museum of the Red River, and the Woodson Art Museum. Her recent solo exhibitions have debuted at Marshall University, York College, the Rosewood Art Center, 707 & 709 Penn Galleries, and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

She received her MFA in Studio Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) with a concentration in painting. Her continuing creative research considers how memory, cognition, and function shape our visual perception, inform the act of representation, and define our understanding of abstraction. Kovak was awarded a Wimmer Faculty Fellowship from Carnegie Mellon’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation to study research-based methods in teaching creative risk-taking. She serves additionally as the Senior Associate Dean for Academics and Student Success in the College of Fine Arts.