Lenore Tawney

Recent years have seen an enormous surge of interest in fiber arts, with works made of thread on display in art museums around the world. But this art form only began to transcend its origins as a humble craft in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s that artists used the fiber arts to build critical practices that challenged the definitions of painting, drawing, and sculpture. One of those artists was Lenore Tawney (1907-2007).

Raised and trained in Chicago before she moved to New York, Tawney had a storied career. She was known for employing an ancient Peruvian gauze weave technique to create a painterly effect that appeared to float in space rather than cling to the wall, as well as for being one of the first artists to blend sculptural techniques with weaving practices and, in the process, pioneered a new direction in fiber art. Despite her prominence on the New York art scene, however, she has only recently begun to receive her due from the greater art world. Accompanying a retrospective at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, this catalog features a comprehensive biography of Tawney, additional essays on her work, and two hundred full-color illustrations, making it of interest to contemporary artists, art historians, and the growing audience for fiber art.

Copublished with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
"This catalogue is published on the occasion of 'In Poetry and Silence: The Work and Studio of Lenore Tawney, ' presented October 5, 2019, to March 7, 2020, as part of 'Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe, ' a series of four exhibitions exploring Lenore Tawney's life, work, and influence, at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center"--Colophon.
Karen Patterson is senior curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
"[Tawney] and her stunning, cosmically evocative work have not received the steady recognition they deserve, a situation redressed here in astute, beautifully written biographical and interpretative essays, including those by Kathleen Nugent Mangan, executive director of the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, and in the finest photographs ever taken of Tawney's radically intricate, meditative, witty, and vital creations. An essential appreciation of a foremost artist and her profoundly soulful and elating work."--Eve Kahn "Booklist Starred Review"
"[Tawney] filled atriums with clouds of knotted thread, and she wrapped cryptic messages around shoemakers' wooden foot forms. In the book's quotations from her stream-of-consciousness journals, readers can trace her path to peace of mind. She would ponder the passage of time while mesmerized by birds 'darting in all directions, ' or a fountain's flow that 'splashes up, the drop in endless formations.'"--Eve Kahn "New York Times"