Lenore Tawney (1907-2007), the preeminent twentieth-century fiber artist whose stunning woven forms transcended craft and transformed fine art, fully wove together life, spirituality, and art once she arrived in New York from Chicago at age 50 in 1957. She turned raw lofts into pristine, elegantly composed spaces quietly vibrant with stones, feathers, shells, and other gathered objects; places for meditation, writing, assembling exquisite collages, and inventing the techniques that allowed her to meticulously create uniquely detailed, expressively monumental, free-hanging sculptures through which light sieved. Breathing wonders of thread, vision, heightened concentration, and dexterity created, as curator Patterson writes in this magnificent volume, so that the world can be reintroduced to awe. Tawney could have orchestrated a splashy career, but she didn't have to sell her work, and, more significantly, she was a contemplative, following her inner path. She and her stunning, cosmically evocative work have not received the steady recognition they deserve, a situation redressed here in astute, beautifully written biographical and interpretative essays, including those by Kathleen Nugent Mangan, executive director of the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, and in the finest photographs ever taken of Tawney's radically intricate, meditative, witty, and vital creations. An essential appreciation of a foremost artist and her profoundly soulful and elating work.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2019 Booklist