Lenore Tawney (born Leonora Agnes Gallagher; May 10, 1907 – September 24, 2007) was an American artist working in fiber art, collage, assemblage, and drawing.

[1][2][3] She is considered to be a groundbreaking artist for the elevation of craft processes to fine art status, two communities which were previously mutually exclusive.

[4][5] Tawney was born and raised in an Irish-American family in Lorain, Ohio near Cleveland and later moved to Chicago to start her career.

[6] Tawney was one of five children born in Lorain, Ohio to Irish mother Sarah Jennings and Irish-American father William Gallagher.

[9][10] Tawney's introduction to the tenets of the German Bauhaus school and the artistic avant-garde began in 1946 when she attended László Moholy-Nagy's Chicago Institute of Design.

[11][2] She returned to the United States and in 1954 she studied with the Finnish weaver Martta Taipale at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

This was the first time she was involved in a show at an important national institution alongside other visionaries in contemporary fiber art.

[3] Because of her unorthodox weaving methods, Tawney was spurned by both the craft and art worlds, but her distinct style attracted many devoted admirers.

[15] In 1957, her friend Margo Hoff wrote the first critical assessment of her work in an article titled, Lenore Tawney: the warp is her canvas for the magazine Craft Horizons.

[2] In November 1957, Tawney demonstrated her commitment to her work and career by moving to New York City, the center of the modern art world.

[1][2][3] She settled in the Coenties Slip, where there was an established colony of well-known modern artists like Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin and Jack Youngerman.

[2][3] In 1961, Tawney's first solo exhibition, which included forty weavings she had produced since 1955, opened at the Staten Island Museum[1][2].

[1] In 1961, Tawney studied the Peruvian gauze weave technique with fiber artist Lili Blumenau[3][2] and pioneered an "open reed" for her loom in order to produce more mutable woven forms.

[3] The open reed allowed for warps to be looser and easily manipulated by hand to accommodate Tawney's new visions.

[1][9] Her early tapestries combined traditional with experimental, using the Peruvian gauze weave technique and inlayed colorful yarns to create a painterly effect that appeared to float in space.

[1] These totem-like sculptural weavings abandoned the rectangular format of traditional tapestries and sometimes included found objects such as feathers and shells.

[9][11] Tawney's collages ranged from postcards, books, three-dimensional drawer cases, and completely fabricated chairs.

[2] The artist's mixed media assemblages incorporate small found objects including feathers, twigs, pebbles, string, bones, wood, and eggshells.

[2] These delicate, poetic pieces were often spiritual in nature, containing elusive messages about finding inner peace and the fragility of life.

Tawney's postcard collages and assemblage constructions filled up two entire exhibitions without textile pieces at the Willard Gallery in 1967 and 1970.