Lenore Tawney, Four Petaled Flower II, 1974

Elisabeth Sherman: Four Petaled Flower II is a large weaving. It is a sculpture made out of fiber, made out of threads. It’s a densely woven fabric with four arms, you could say. And each of those arms is a completely closed weave. 

Narrator: Assistant Curator Elisabeth Sherman.

Elisabeth Sherman: At the center of the composition, Tawney has woven in these open slits that allow some light to come through from behind. Prior to working in this way in the seventies, Tawney’s weavings were much more open and diaphanous. They were almost completely composed of light and empty space, with the threads very gently holding the composition together. 

I think part of what changes in this period is the rise of Minimalism in the art world. Something else that’s very important to her over the whole span of her career is technical innovation. She’s both drawing on weaving techniques that she’s learned from many different cultures and technical understanding about the history of this mode of working around the world, but also her own technical innovations. So manipulating the loom itself as well as the ways in which you work with warp and weft, the horizontal and vertical threads in a weaving, to create structures and openings and transparencies that previously weren’t technically possible.