Artist, Lenore Tawney: Why do I want to be in New York? I want to be near the water. Someone said, well, I know somebody who has this building right on the river. And when I saw this enormous space in this loft, 25 feet by 80, 14-foot ceilings, skylights, three floors.
So there, I was right on the river, looking at the river and the boat in the light of Brooklyn. Incidentally, down there, I was with all these artists. Like Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman, Agnes Martin, and then next door was Robert Indiana, and Rauschenberg and Johns were on Front Street. All these people were right there.
I didn’t know whether I’d stay, but I stayed. I immediately felt free.
I was interested in weaving especially. So I bought a secondhand loom and a friend taught me how to put on a warp and I began to do it. At first, I had to make drawings, because that’s what I was doing, making what you call tapestries. It’d be like, you’d make a drawing, and it’s actually just a sketch on a big piece of wrapping paper with pencil. You pin it underneath. And it’s like a scale. I would put in my own colors as I went.
Well then, when I began doing them more freely and leaving things hanging off, it had to become three-dimensional. But it was very controversial, what I created. Because I did those open things, which a lot of people get scared when they see open things that they might fall apart. But I did those things and it was…it was thrilling.
Archival audio from: Oral history interview with Lenore Tawney, 1971 June 23. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.