In honor of Asian American Pacific Islander month in the U.S., May First's Doodle celebrates Ruth Asawa, the acclaimed Japanese American artist and educator who overcame great adversity throughout her journey, ultimately exhibiting her intricate wire sculptures and works on paper in museums around the world.
Born in 1926, Asawa’s family made a living as farmers until World War II, when they were sent to the US government internment camps for the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. There, Asawa pursued her interest in art, getting lessons from fellow camp inmates.
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| RUTH ASAWA |
Following sixteen months of internment, Asawa received a scholarship to Milwaukee State Teachers College, where she studied to become an art teacher. Three years later, she was prevented from doing her student teaching because of her Japanese heritage. Undeterred, she transferred to the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina. It was there that she blossomed as an artist and met the architect Albert Lanier, whom she would marry and start a family with, raising six children together.
Adapting methods she learned in Mexico, where people made wire baskets for domestic use, Asawa used similar techniques to create the looped wire sculptures she became known for. Asked to name her inspirations, she spoke of “plants, the spiral shell of a snail, seeing light through insect wings, watching spiders repair their webs in the early morning, and seeing the sun through the droplets of water suspended from the tips of pine needles while watering my garden.”
Adapting methods she learned in Mexico, where people made wire baskets for domestic use, Asawa used similar techniques to create the looped wire sculptures she became known for. Asked to name her inspirations, she spoke of “plants, the spiral shell of a snail, seeing light through insect wings, watching spiders repair their webs in the early morning, and seeing the sun through the droplets of water suspended from the tips of pine needles while watering my garden.”
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| Ruth Asawa reflected her experience as a detainee in the San Jose Internment Memorial that she sculpted. |
While some critics dismissed her art as “feminine handiwork” early on, but aappreciation of Asawa’s work has grown over time. Her legacy lives on in public commissions in California as well as museums and galleries around the globe.
She designed the Japanese American Internment Memorial Sculpture in San Jose in 1994 as well as SF State University’s Garden of Remembrance, which includes boulders from ten internment camps.
Asawa also advocated for arts education for kids, including the creation of a public arts high school that was later renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Since 1982, the city of San Francisco has also declared February 12 to be Ruth Asawa Day.
Asawa also advocated for arts education for kids, including the creation of a public arts high school that was later renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Since 1982, the city of San Francisco has also declared February 12 to be Ruth Asawa Day.
"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," she said.
She died at her San Francisco home in 2013 at the age of 87.
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