‘Art will make people better, more highly skilled in thinking and improving whatever business or occupation one goes into. It makes a person broader.” So proclaimed Ruth Asawa in 1976. Born 50 years earlier, she was a US artist hailed for her cocoon-like sculptures made from interlocking, silvery wires that hang from the ceiling and evoke womb-like forms. When lit, they create shadows, enhancing unexpected shapes from every angle.
Asawa is also remembered as one of the foremost educators in the San Francisco region, having founded the city’s first public arts high school in 1982 – renamed Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010. Raised on a farm in California by immigrant Japanese parents, as a teenager, Asawa became one of the 100,000 Japanese Americans placed in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. In the camp, one of her tutors included Tom Okamoto, an animator for Walt Disney, who no doubt served as an influence for her later fine line drawings.
