Tawney was born Leonora Agnes Gallagher in Lorain, Ohio, in 1907. She studied drawing, sculpture, and weaving with well-known artists at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana (1943-45), the Institute of Design in Chicago (1946-48), and at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina where she became a weaver (1954). Throughout her prolific career, Tawney has had numerous one-person ex