ronulicny:“Portrait Of Japanese-American Artist Sculptor Ruth Asawa As She Kneels On The Floor Amid
ronulicny:“Portrait Of Japanese-American Artist Sculptor Ruth Asawa As She Kneels On The Floor Amid Several Of Her Works”, 1954 By: NAT FARBMAN….There’s an obituary of her from 2013 at the New York Times:Ruth Asawa, an artist who learned to draw in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II and later earned renown weaving wire into intricate, flowing, fanciful abstract sculptures, died on Aug. 6 at her home in San Francisco, where many of her works now dot the cityscape. She was 87.Her daughter Aiko Cuneo confirmed the death.Ms. Asawa had been shunted from one detention camp to another as a child before blossoming under the tutelage of the artists Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Franz Kline and Josef Albers. Gaining notice in the art world while still a student, she soon began building a wider following with abstract wire sculptures that expressed both the craftsmanship she had learned from Mexican basket makers as well as her ambition to extend line drawings into a third dimension. Many of these were hanging mobiles.Ruth AsawaAndreaUS (1966-1968)Cast bronze fountainGhirardelli Square, 900 North Point, San Francisco[Source]In 1968 she startled her admirers by creating her first representational work, a fountain in Ghirardelli Square on San Francisco’s waterfront. It had two mermaids — one nursing a “merbaby” — frogs, turtles, splashing water and a recording of frogs croaking.Lawrence Halprin, the distinguished landscape architect who designed the waterfront space, had planned to install an abstract fountain. But after a long, unexplained delay, the developer chose Ms. Asawa for the job. Her creation set off a freewheeling debate about aesthetics, feminism and public art. Mr. Halprin, who had been a fan of Ms. Asawa’s abstractions, complained that the mermaids looked like a suburban lawn ornament.Ms. Asawa countered with old-fashioned sentiment. “For the old, it would bring back the fantasy of their childhood,” she said, “and for the young, it would give them something to remember when they grow old.” -- source link
#ruth asawa#japanese american#woman artist#asian american#1950s#1960s