Cooper Hewitt says...
Born in Warwick, Rhode Island in 1940, Naomi Whiting-Towner was raised there by her parents, Basil J. Whiting Sr., a jewelry toolmaker, and Nellie Whiting, a librarian. She graduated in 1958 from Warwick Veterans Memorial High School and completed her BFA in textile design in 1962 at the Rhode Island School of Design. From 1962–1963 she earned a certificate as a special foreign student in fiber, textile and weaving arts at the innovative Friends of Handicraft/Handarbetets Vänner School in Stockholm, Sweden. After returning to the United States, she attended the Rochester Institute of Technology where she earned her MFA in textiles, graduating in 1965.
In September 1966, Whiting-Towner joined the faculty of Illinois State University in Normal and retired as a full professor of fiber arts in May 1999. As a practicing fiber artist and photographer, she exhibited widely, and her work resides in numerous individual and regional institutional collections including the McLean County Arts Center. She frequently served as a juror for fiber art exhibitions and was also a regular participant on the lecture circuit for arts and crafts events throughout the country. Her reviews of textile exhibitions were published in Craft Horizons and American Craft in the 1970s–1980s. In 1979, she published a book on weave structures used in North American coverlets. Her essay on the history of fiber art in the United States appeared in the exhibition catalog Filaments of the Imagination, published in 1981.
In creating her Mirage series of 1990s, she frequently referenced the landscapes of Illinois and the southwest, employing reflective materials and a variety of weave structures to create multi-layered wall hangings with vaporous effects that suggested light and movement through space.
Her estate made a large gift to Lois Jett Historic Costume Collection at Illinois State University. The gift included an expansive inventory of more than thirty textile-related books and periodicals as well as seventy-five textiles representing various cultures from around the world.
https://www.pantagraph.com/obituaries/naomi-towner/article_c2ac5330-f33f-5c64-b03e-b99703a529c5.html; accessed on Dec. 18, 2020.
YouTube.com: Sinew: Naomi Whiting Towner; accessed on Jan. 12, 2020.
