Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center
In Poetry and Silence: The Work and Studio of Lenore Tawney includes an evocation of the artist’s New York studio. It is now on view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
Lenore Tawney was an influential figure in the postwar fiber arts movement, creating groundbreaking work that continues to reverberate today. Known for her monumental sculptural weavings, Tawney’s artistic practice is showcased in the exhibition “In Poetry and Silence” at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center through March 7.
In 1957, Tawney left a comfortable life in Chicago for a new undertaking as a full-time artist in New York. She shed one way of living to build another and over the next 50 years, nurtured an inventive, profoundly personal, life of art making and spiritual growth.
Despite moving studio locations four times in a decade, the feel of her New York spaces remained the same. There were skeins of carefully looped vibrant threads, stacked books with spiritual teachings, eggs nestled in baskets, and drawers holding seahorses and other delights. Ceramics made by dear friends and boxes of feathers and other treasures were all at home in Tawney’s airy, serene environment.
She lived and worked in these spaces, collapsing boundaries between art and life. “I left Chicago to seek a barer life, closer to reality, without all the things that clutter and fill our lives,” wrote Tawney in a journal entry. “The truest thing in my life was my work. I wanted my life to be as true.”
An evocation of Tawney’s studio anchors the Art Center’s exhibition, underscoring the relationship of the artist’s space to the work she produced. Tawney used techniques that required attentiveness, prompted intuition, and took long stretches of time. Her body of work includes drawing, collage, sculpture and assemblage in addition to weaving.
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On one side of the gallery, visitors are able to view some of her objects and furnishings as they might have been arranged in one of Tawney’s loft spaces. The selection of her weavings, drawings and collages that also occupy the gallery reveals relationships between the environment she constructed for herself and the art she made there.
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is located at 608 New York Avenue, Sheboygan. Admission is free. For information, visit jmkac.org or call 920.458.6144.
