The work of the late artist, Ruth Asawa, has been on display for the last 4 months at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art in the downtown city center. It has been a well-attended special exhibition that has drawn large crowds of City visitors. Ms. Asawa, a native Californian from the southland, lived in San Francisco most of her adult life with her artist-husband and their 6 children. They lived in a friendly neighborhood -Noe Valley, on the eastern slopes of Twin Peaks, the City's high point(s).
She came to SF for a variety of reasons, not the least was her desire to be closer to her parents who still lived in SO CAL. At the outbreak of WW II, she and her family were interned in camps for Japanese -American citizens by Pres. Roosevelt's executive order, defying the Constitutional rights of these citizens. Asa young teenager, she faced the prospect of isolation for unknown time period; unknown educational opportunities, and cultural deprivations. However, professionals among the detainees gathered themselves to offer educational courses to their fellow Japanese. Ruth was saved from neglect and learning resources.
She signed up for geometry, painting, art classes of all types, and poetry writing. She found much to increase her own artistic abilities. After the War ended, she was accepted to art college in Asheville, North Carolina at Black Mountain College, a private school founded there in 1933. The school offered holistic approach to the study of art, organized around the many individual disciplines of painting, sculpture, design, landscape architecture, printing, and poetry. This inter-disciplinary approach was a new methos rarely taught in the US before 1933. Ruth prospered hereand met many other artists who mentored her, including Buckminster Fuller, Robert Rauschenberg, and her husband to be, Lanier. For the 3 years of residency, she honed her skills until leaving in 1949 to begin a career as a professional artist.
During one period of her training, Ruth worked with Native American basket weavers who taught her the age-old techniques of basket weaving styles and designs. This basic skill was altered by Ruth to become her iconic metal wire sculptures for which she is renowned. Many are on display at the exhibition. also among the works are oil paintings, water color works, and much of her advanced wire designs. Her insistence that art be taught to children included her own children who often helped with her projects at home in her studio. Before too long, her own children learned basic techniques to assist her, especially with casting and molding figures she designed, including the historic fountains in SF at Union Square and Ghiradelli Plaza.
She led an amazing life that despite the wartime incarceration, she found meaning and redemption in her life's work.
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