Maris Van Vlack

Using traditional textile techniques, Maris Van Vlack constructs tactile images that reference topography, geology, and generational memory. The Rhode Island School of Design graduate’s work is primarily hand-woven, consisting of panels of fabric slowly built up thread by thread, a linear process that traps memory and history within the material. After hand-weaving a base tapestry, she layers the surface with drawn, painted, and stitched marks, also grafting in sections of industrial jacquard weaving and stoll knitting. Each piece balances the materiality of the fibers with the atmosphere created within the deep pictorial space. The landscapes in the work combine architectural structures from the past and the present, referencing photographs of places in Europe destroyed during World War II, where family members lived. Her work is a window through which to see layers of time and memory converging and melding into one. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Bromfield Gallery (Boston, USA), Gallery 263 (Cambridge, USA), and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI). She had participated in group presentations at Bravin Lee (New York, USA), the (Newport, USA), the Icelandic Textile Center (Blönduós, Iceland), the The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, D.C.), and the RISD Museum (Providence, USA). She is the recipient of the 2026 Artist Fellowship at Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA).