BEYE Discovery: Post Card Art Inspired by Artist Lenore Tawney

Post Contributed by Jocelyne Adkins, Program Director

Heidi, 3rd grade

I was introduced to the work of Lenore Tawney in 1999, on my first day of employment in the Department of Textiles at The Art Institute of Chicago. One of my duties that day was to prepare Tawney's work titled "The Bride Has Entered" for de-installation. It is an impressive piece (see link below), with strand after strand of linen thread, uniformly hanging from a gridded "umbrella" of fabric. Tawney's work is important because she developed a form of weaving that embraced negative spaces and that could hang independently in space, not requiring a wall on which to hang ~ the craft of weaving in Tawney hands had now become an art form : )

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/149413?search_no=2&index=16

Recently, I discovered that Tawney had created and sent many handmade post cards to family and friends, throughout a 30 year period. Tawney's collaged post cards strongly resonated with me, just as her textiles did over a decade ago (see the link below, for her book "Lenore Tawney ~ Signs on the Wind").

http://www.amazon.com/Lenore-Tawney-Signs-Postcard-Collages/dp/0764921304#reader_0764921304

I anticipated that Tawney's post cards would also capture the attention and interests of our students, and I chose to introduce Tawney as the first female artist for this week's theme: "Celebrating Women Artists of the 20th and 21st Centuries".

Julian's completed post card

To begin, we shared several of Tawney's texile works and then a number of Tawney's handmade postcards. Students enjoyed identifying the images they saw in her collaged post cards, such as birds and other animals, eggs, feathers, references to classical art, etc.

Yinka, 1st postcard design

With Tawney's post cards as inspiration and lots of magazine images to work with, our students made their own collaged post cards to send to family and friends. We also provided ink, stamps and colored pencils to complete the collages (if desired). A number of students were excited to have their postcards placed in the mail, soon to be received by family members. You can see the students in action below in addition to their completed post cards : )