Lenore (Gallagher) Tawney, hailed as a redefining figure for the fiber arts, was born in 1907 in Lorain, Ohio. She moved to Chicago in 1927, and started work as a proofreader while taking evening classes at the Art Institute. She studied sculpture with Alexander Archipenko, drawing with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and weaving with Marli Ehrman at the Institute of Design. She later studied tapestry with Finnish weaver Martta Taipale at the Penland School of Crafts. She married psychologist George Tawney in 1941, and was with him until his sudden death a year and a half later. After his death, Tawney traveled extensively in Mexico, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Returning to the United States in 1957, Tawney moved from Chicago to New York, where she was introduced to the avant-garde world of the abstract expressionists. Soon after her move, Tawney began to restructure her tapestries into sculptural woven forms, reinventing the traditional weaving of two dimensional wall textiles into an innovative three-dimensional approach with her work freely suspended in space. Tawney’s work eventually moved out of fiber and weaving almost entirely when she began to explore collage and found objects, but her remarkable influence on fiber art remains a legacy. Her work is included in numerous national collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Tawney died in 2007.