Lenore Thomas Straus

Lenore Thomas Straus (1 November 1909 – 16 January 1988) was an American sculptor and author.

Life and work

Lenore Thomas was born 1 November 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Andrew S. Thomas and Lucy Haagsma, and died at her home in Blue Hill, Maine, on 16 January 1988. Although she studied at the Chicago Art Institute, as a sculptor she was largely self-taught.^[1] Much of her early work involved public art created under various New Deal programs, including terra cotta murals for several post offices. She fashioned two major pieces for the Resettlement Administration's planned community in Greenbelt, Maryland—a large Mother and Child^[2] and several panels illustrating the Preamble to the United States Constitution.^[3] Along with other Public Works Administration artists Hugh Collins, Carmelo Arutu, and Joseph Goethe, she created playground sculpture for Langston Terrace, the first federally funded housing project in Washington, DC.^[4] In the early 1940s, when she was living in Accokeek, Maryland, she married Robert Ware Straus, who was to play an integral role in the preservation of the view across the Potomac River from George Washington's home at Mount Vernon.^[5] In 1968, she moved to Maine, where she was a student of zen teacher Walter Nowick at Moonspring Hermitage.^[6] in Surry, which later became the Morgan Bay zendo. She was an active member of the Morgan Bay zendo,^[1] and several of her sculptures remain on its grounds^[6]

In 1987, the University of Maine honored her with the Maryann Hartman Award, which recognizes distinguished women of Maine.^[7] Shortly after her death in 1988, the Lenore Thomas Straus Scholarship was established in her name at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, where Straus had taught as an artist-in-residence in 1984 and 1986 and plunged into the medium of handmade paper.^[8]

Gallery

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  Greenbelt, Maryland bas relief "Promote the General Welfare"

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  Greenbelt, Maryland bas relief "Provide for the Common Defense"

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  Greenbelt, Maryland bas relief "Insure Domestic Tranquility"

List of selected works

Bibliography

• The Tender Stone (1964)
• Stone Dust: The Autobiography of a Stone Carving (1969)

References