Anna Kovina was born in Moscow in 1977 and raised in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where her childhood revolved around drawing, painting, sewing, and rhythmic gymnastics. In 1995, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she immigrated to the United States. She earned degrees in finance and law and went on to practice law in Palo Alto, California. Motherhood brought her back to making. After the birth of her second child, her family relocated to a farm in rural Sonoma County. Immersed in the rhythms of nature, animals, and young children, she began creating again—designing regenerative landscapes, knitting, and painting.
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Her children’s joy in drawing, building, and playing with complete abandon reminded her of the creative freedom she had set aside. She became captivated by the joy of fearless creativity, unconcerned with outcome.
This kind of creativity doesn’t chase perfection or result, only the thrill of making. This fearless experimentation became a model for her practice and continues to shape her evolving work with light and sound, wool and metal, and, obsessively, with glass.
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In 2021, Anna and her family moved to Richmond, Virginia, where she enrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University to study sculpture. There, she found new methods of making that matched with her long view of time, her need for hands-on labor, and the exhilaration of working with extreme temperatures. She earned her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from VCU and now lives and works in Richmond.
Anna has received multiple honors, including Dean's Best in Show and Juror's Best in Sculpture at VCUArts 2024 Juried Undergraduate Exhibition and the Vikki Katel Memorial Scholarship in Sculpture (2022). Her research has been supported by VCU's Dean's International Research Grant (2023) for work on contemporary feminist art and historical narratives of reproduction, and an Interdisciplinary Research Grant (2023) for collaborative research on the social psychology of childbirth. She completed an internship with Swedish artist Matilda Kästel in Stockholm through VCUArts' Internship Funding Grant.
Her upcoming residencies include Virginia Center for the Creative Arts October 2025) and KALA Art Institute in Berkeley, California (July 2025).