Lenore Tawney was an American artist working in fiber art, collage, assemblage, and drawing. She is considered to be a groundbreaking artist for the elevation of craft processes to fine art status, two communities which were previously mutually exclusive. Tawney was born and raised in an Irish-American family in Lorain, Ohio near Cleveland and later moved to Chicago to start her career. In the 1940s and 50s, she studied art at several different institutions and perfected her craft as a weaver. In 1957, she moved to New York where she maintained a highly successful career into the 1960's. In the 1970s Tawney focused increasingly on her spirituality, but continued to make work until her death.
Arline Fisch is an American artist and educator. She is known for her work as a metalsmith and jeweler, pioneering the use of textile processes from crochet, knitting, plaiting, and weaving in her work in metal. She developed groundbreaking techniques for incorporating metal wire and other materials into her jewelry.
Mary Lee Hu is an American artist, goldsmith, and college level educator known for using textile techniques to create intricate woven wire jewelry.
Anne Wilson is a Chicago-based visual artist. Wilson creates sculpture, drawings, Internet projects, photography, performance, and DVD stop motion animations employing table linens, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread and wire. Her work extends the traditional processes of fiber art to other media. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dorothy Wright Liebes was an American textile designer and weaver renowned for her innovative, custom-designed modern fabrics for architects and interior designers. She was known as "the mother of modern weaving".
Sonya Clark is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Although African art and her Caribbean background are important influences, Clark also builds on practices of assemblage and accumulation used by artists such as Betye Saar and David Hammons.
Mary Jackson is an African American fiber artist. She is best known for her sweetgrass basket weaving using traditional methods combined with contemporary designs. A native of coastal South Carolina and a descendant of generations of Gullah basket weavers, Jackson was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2008 for "pushing the tradition in stunning new directions." Mary Jackson is a recipient of a 2010 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Adela Akers was a Spanish-born textile and fiber artist residing in the United States. She was Professor Emeritus at the Tyler School of Art. Her career as an artist spans the "whole history of modern fiber art." Her work is in the Renwick Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Art and Design. Her papers are at the Archives of American Art.
Neda Al-Hilali is an American fiber artist.
Katherine Westphal was an American textile designer and fiber artist who helped to establish quilting as a fine art form.
Kay Sekimachi is an American fiber artist and weaver, best known for her three-dimensional woven monofilament hangings as well as her intricate baskets and bowls.
Cynthia Schira is an American textile artist and former university professor. Her work is represented in the collections of many major public museums.
Tanya Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles–based artist, designer, and activist.
Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada is a Japanese textile artist, curator, art historian, scholar, professor, and author. She has received international recognition for her scholarship and expertise in the field of textile art. In 2010, she was named a "Distinguished Craft Educator - Master of Medium" by the James Renwick Alliance of the Smithsonian Institution, who stated: "she is single-handedly responsible for introducing the art of Japanese shibori to this country". In 2016 she received the George Hewitt Myers Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Carol Ann Carter is an American artist best known for her mixed media and fiber construction works. Her works can be found in public collections such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art. She is currently a Professor Emeritus of visual arts at the University of Kansas.
Nance O'Banion (1949-2018) was an Oakland based American artist who "pioneered creative explorations of handmade paper". She is known for her sculptural paper works and book works which focus on themes of change and transformation. A retrospective sample of the arc of her work may be viewed at: https://nance-obanion.com
Consuelo Jiménez Underwood is an American fiber artist, known for her pieces that focus on immigration issues. She is an indigenous Chicana currently based in Cupertino, California. As an artist she works with textiles in attempt to unify her American roots with her Mexican Indigenous ones, along with trying to convey the same for other multicultural people.
Gyöngy Laky is an American sculptor living and working in San Francisco, California. Her work has been exhibited in the U.S., Europe, Asia and South America. She gained recognition early in her career for her linear sculptures constructed in the architectural methods of textile arts. “Laky’s art manifests architectonic sensibility. She is as much an engineer as she is an artist in the conventional sense.” She is also known for her site-specific, outdoor, temporary installations.
Lillian Wolock Elliott was an American fiber artist, and textile designer. She is known for her innovative basket craft.
Mary Giles (1944–2018) was an American fiber artist.
