Ruth Asawa

Born Ruth Aiko Asawa on January 24, 1926, in Norwalk, California, to Umakichi and Haru Asawa, immigrants from Japan. She was the fourth of seven children. Her parents were truck farmers who grow seasonal crops such as strawberries, carrots, green beans, and tomatoes. Due to discriminatory laws against Japanese people living in the US, her parents were not allowed to become American citizens or own land in California. By the time Asawa was six, she began to work part-time jobs. She often said her before and after school program as a child was farmwork. One of her jobs was to start and stoke the woodfire that kept the ofuro, or bath, water hot every evening.

In February of 1942,Asawa’s father, Umakichi, was arrested by the FBI and sent to a Justice Department Camp, an internment camp in New Mexico. The FBI arrested all the male community leaders first. Asawa would not see him again until 1948. In late April, Asawa, her mother, and five of her siblings were interned at Santa Anita Race Track, where for six months they lived in horse stables. Asawa recalled, “The smell of horse dung never left the place the entire time we were there." Freed from farm work, she spent her time drawing with artists from the Disney Studio who were also interned. In September 1942, the Asawa family was shipped by train to a camp in Rohwer, Arkansas.

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.453, Hanging Three-Lobed, Three-Layered Continuous Form within a Form), c. 1957–59, Iron Wire, 41 1/4 x 16 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches (104.8 x 41.9 x 41.9 cm), Private Collection Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery © The Estate of Ruth Asawa, Courtesy The Estate of Ruth Asawa and David Zwirner, New York/London/Hong Kong. Photograph by Dan Bradica.

Asawa graduated from high school at the internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. Through a scholarship from the Quakers, she studied to be an art teacher at Milwaukee State Teachers College in Wisconsin. In 1946, Asawa is unable to do her student teaching due to hostility against the Japanese. At the encouragement of her friends, Elaine Schmidt and Ray Johnson, she traveled to Black Mountain College in North Carolina to spend the summer studying art. Asawa is invigorated by her summer session, she stays on scholarship for another three years. Her teachers include the painter Josef Albers, dancer Merce Cunningham, and architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller. She is profoundly influenced by the community of artists and educators at the experimental, liberal arts college. She also meets her future husband, architect Albert Lanier, while there.

Asawa leaves Black Mountain to join Albert Lanier in San Francisco, where they marry against the wishes of their families. They decide to live in San Francisco, a city with a vibrant arts community that they believe will be more hospitable to an interracial couple. They have six children in nine years. Asawa works at home in her studio, often at night and in the early morning while her children sleep. She begins to receive recognition for her looped wire sculpture, and decides to continue developing her own work in her home and raise her children. Asawa befriends two local photographers who provided her with an abundance of moral support — Imogen Cunningham and Paul Hassel. Along with Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, the weaver Trude Guermonprez, and the ceramic artist Marguerite Wildenhain (all from Black Mountain College) these older artists encourage Asawa to pursue her work. Cunningham also advises her to use her maiden name, Asawa.

 Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.590, Hanging Open Undulating Form), c. 1960. © The Estate of Ruth Asawa

Influenced by the social unrest of the 1960s, Asawa becomes more active and vocal in her community. She begins to compete for and win public commissions starting in 1966, with her bare-breasted nursing mermaids in Ghirardelli Square. In 1968, she is appointed to the San Francisco Arts Commission and co-founds the Alvarado Workshop with fellow parent Sally Woodbridge. Her social and political life increases dramatically as she joins other artists in advocating for social change. Fees from her commissions give her the financial freedom to design larger projects that often require collaboration. Asawa formulates a teaching philosophy based on her personal experience: “A child can learn something about color, about design, and about observing objects in nature. If you do that, you grow into a greater awareness of things around you. Art will make people better, more highly skilled in thinking and improving whatever business one goes into, or whatever occupation. It makes a person broader.” Asawa then focuses her energy on building a public high school for the arts in San Francisco. Her vision is to locate it in the heart of Civic Center so that it is close to the city's world-class cultural organizations such as the opera, ballet, Jazz Center, the main library, and symphony. In 2010 the school was renamed for her and is now the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts.

Asawa died at home in her sleep at dawn on August 6, 2013, at age 87. Her memorial is held in Golden Gate Park, outside the deYoung Museum where she spent much of her time with her young children drawing the plane trees. As a trustee of the museum, she had also worked tirelessly to build community support for the campaign to renovate the museum. Students from the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts performed in her honor. “Sculpture is like farming,” she once said. “If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.”

Untitled (SD.047, Drawing of Electroplated Sculpture S.112), c. 1963, Pen and black ink on tracing paper, 16 ½ x 14 in. Courtesy Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.