Lenore Thomas Straus

• Name — Lenore Thomas Straus • Birth Name — Lenore Thomas • Born — November 1, 1909 • Birthplace — Chicago, Illinois • Died — 16 January 1988 • Place of death — East Blue Hill, Maine • Field — Sculpture • Training — Chicago Art Institute

• Illustration — Thomas at work on Garment Worker (1936), a limestone sculpture for the school at Jersey Homesteads, New Jersey Lenore Thomas was born November 1, 1909, in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Andrew S. Thomas and Lucy Haagsma, and died at her home in Blue Hill, Maine, on January 16, 1988. Although she studied at the Chicago Art Institute, as a sculptor she was largely self-taught. She had an exhibit of her work in Mexico City in 1933. Much of her early work involved public art created under New Deal programs, including the Public Works of Art Project and the Section of Painting and Sculpture. She created two major pieces for the Resettlement Administration's planned community in Greenbelt, Maryland—Mother and Child and several panels illustrating the Preamble to the United States Constitution. 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. 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 and the formation of the Moyaone Reserve. She maintained a studio at their Accokeek home. In 1968, she moved to Maine, where she was a student of zen teacher Walter Nowick at Moonspring Hermitage in Surry, which later became the Morgan Bay zendo. She was an active member of the Morgan Bay zendo, and several of her sculptures remain on its grounds. In 1987, the University of Maine honored her with the Maryann Hartman Award, which recognizes distinguished women of Maine. 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.

• Illustration — Garment Worker (1936), Roosevelt, New Jersey • Illustration — Greenbelt, Maryland bas relief "Promote the General Welfare" • Illustration — Greenbelt, Maryland bas relief "Provide for the Common Defense" • Illustration — Greenbelt, Maryland bas relief "Insure Domestic Tranquility" • Illustration — Mother and Child (1939), Greenbelt, Maryland

• c. 1927 — Blue Rhinoceros — glazed brick — Alice Ferguson Foundation, Accokeek, Maryland • 1936 — Garment Worker — limestone — Roosevelt Public School, Roosevelt, New Jersey • 1937 — Preamble to the Constitution — limestone — Greenbelt Community Center, Greenbelt Maryland • 1939 — Delivery of Mail to the Farm — glazed terra cotta — Post office, Fredonia, Kansas • 1939 — Mother and Child — stone — Town center, Greenbelt, Maryland • 1939 — Rural Life — Post office, Covington, Virginia • 1940 — Frog — concrete — Langston Terrace playground, Washington, DC • 1941 — Industries and Agriculture of Leetonia — terra cotta relief — Post office, Leetonia, Ohio • 1943 — Springtime — Post office, Webster Springs, West Virginia • 1967 — The Fisherman's Wife — Vestvågøy, Lofoten, Norway • Two Headed Sculpture — Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill, Maine • Alice — Alice Ferguson Foundation, Accokeek, Maryland • Henry — Alice Ferguson Foundation, Accokeek, Maryland