A Member’s Field Guide toRuth Asawa: A Retrospective
The exhibition charts Asawa’s lifelong explorations of materialsand forms in a variety of mediums, including wire sculpture,bronze casts, drawings, paintings, prints, and public works. Delveinto her groundbreaking work through words, images, and more.
“It doesn’t bother me. Whether it’s a craft or whether it’s art. That is a definition that people put on things,” artist, activist, and educator Ruth Asawa has said. “And what I like is the material is irrelevant. It’s just that that happens to be material that I use. And I think that is important. That you take an ordinary material like wire and...you give it a new definition.”
Born on a farm in Southern California, Asawa began her arts education when she was a teenager and she and her family were among the thousands of persons of Japanese descent who were forcibly incarcerated by the US government during World War II. It was at the internment camp that Asawa began taking classes in painting and drawing. After her release, Asawa studied to be a teacher but was unable to get a license because of her Japanese heritage, so she enrolled at Black Mountain College, an experimental art school in North Carolina....
