Partnering with artist Faron Thompson, Kovak presents memory-based maps exploring shared geographies in Pittsburgh and Bloomington, Indiana.
Professor Kristen Letts Kovak is currently showing in “Throughlines,” a group exhibition developed through a partnership between Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (AAP) and Creative Citizen Studios (CCS), a Pittsburgh-based organization that brings artists of all abilities together, including those with intellectual and developmental differences.
For the exhibition, Kovak paired up with CCS artist Faron Thompson to create a series of six works that map their disjointed memories of Bloomington, Indiana — a small Midwestern city they unknowingly inhabited at the same time — as well as Pittsburgh. Using watercolor, gouache, marker, ink, and colored pencil, the works explore personal geography, recollection, and shared experience. Two collaborative pieces balance Kovak’s painterly approach with Thompson’s graphic linework, presenting imagined maps of Bloomington drawn from memory and dotted with meaningful locations. Thompson also contributed a memory-based map of Pittsburgh.
Kristen Letts Kovak, Cloropleth