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| Ruth Asawa, 1980 |
They stayed six months, during which Ruth studied drawing with several Disney animators who had also been detained. They were moved to a camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. Ruth wrote letters and collected testimonials on behalf of her father, requesting authorities to let him join the family.
When she finished high school, Ruth attended Milwaukee State Teachers College, hoping to become an art teacher. She was not allowed, however, because of her Japanese ancestry, and so did not finish her degree. Instead she joined other artists at the experimental Black Mountain college in North Carolina. At Black Mountain, Ruth found in Joseph Albers, a German artist trained at the Bauhaus, a life-long mentor. Albers gave out design problems: “Draw what you see, not what you know.” Empty space was as important as the drawing's content.
The school was chronically poor and chaotic, but Ruth thrived. She did heavy work in the dairy and in the fields, keeping farmer’s hours. In 1947, she was given an opportunity to teach for the summer in Mexico by the American Friends Service. Traveling there with Joseph and Anni Albers, she reveled in the bold, saturated colors and learned a basket-making technique using twists of wire. When she returned to Black Mountain, she focused on this, mounting an exhibition of baskets in 1948.
That year, Ruth met a young architect, Albert Lanier. He had come to Black Mountain seeking creative freedom, a modern experimental approach. Soon, he and Ruth were inseparable. They began planning and dreaming of life together, but the road was not easy. Both of their parents were set against a marriage, and only two states in 1949 allowed it. Others considered inter-racial marriage “miscegenation.”
Albert went to San Francisco and became a carpenter’s apprentice. Ruth stayed at Black Mountain, becoming a student leader when it exploded into conflict. Absence increased their determination to marry and they did in 1949 in a loft in the produce district of San Francisco which Albert had found as a live-in studio. Buckminster Fuller made their rings, and friends made a dress for Ruth.
Ruth wanted six children. Their first came that year, Aiko, plus they adopted a baby of about the same age, Xavier. Ruth nursed them both, amid her work of making wire sculptures and cooking abundant meals for all of them. By 1952, Albert’s parents came around, Ruth’s sister Kimiko came to help, and a third child, Hudson, was born.
It was a time of great productivity for Ruth. Her work was showing at the Peridot Gallery in New York, plus in exhibitions and magazines. Her wire sculptures were growing bigger, translucent shapes in light and shadow. Time magazine noted her “economy of means, simple shapes.” In 1956 Adam was adopted, and two more babies were born, Addie in 1958 and Paul in 1959, to bring the number of children to six. A friend said, “anything Ruth touches becomes art. She could make art of a mud puddle if she wished.”
Albert was also busy, especially interested in the preservation of old buildings. In 1960, he opened his own office, Lanier and Sherrill. The family moved into several rented apartments before Albert built them a large house organized around space and light, with a big, sunny garden in Noe Valley.
Ruth had a solo show at the de Young museum in San Francisco, becoming an advocate and trustee. She didn’t like selling her work, but as a working artist, she became good at balancing life and art. When her children brought home depressing handouts from school to be colored in, she and others from the Noe Valley PTA began a summer arts program staffed by artists and volunteers. In time their project fanned out through all the schools in the city. A new federal program, CETA, created public service jobs and Ruth’s group applied for funds. They also developed a depot for art supplies.
Ruth became known to developers in San Francisco. She was asked to create a fountain for the revitalized Ghirardelli Square. Her fanciful design included sea turtles, frogs and mermaids, one modeled on her neighbor. The landscape architect, Lawrence Halprin, hated it. There was a fight, but Ruth stood her ground and the developer supported her. Installed at night, in 1968, the fountain is beloved. The mayor put Ruth on the Arts Commission.
Ruth also made a fountain near Union Square of figures and scenes from around the city, molded in baker’s clay by many hands, and cast in bronze. She had many other commissions and had begun to campaign for a dedicated arts high school in the city.
In 1984, Ruth was 57. She and Albert went to Europe where a museum for the Albers was being dedicated. They had a wonderful month, but Ruth was having odd symptoms. She was diagnosed with lupus, and underwent treatment. Eventually she began to get better, though the lupus waxed and waned over the next years. It didn’t slow Ruth down much, though. In 1985, she toured Japan’s art and gardens.
Reparations for Japanese who had been interned came in 1988. Ruth worked on a large memorial wall in San Jose which she said was “very personal, but also very generic.” She started speaking about her war time experience and the healing power of art. She got an honorary doctorate from San Francisco State, and was finally given her bachelor’s degree by the University of Wisconsin. At San Francisco State she made a peaceful garden of remembrance with ten boulders, one for each of the war-time relocation camps.
When discussions began about rebuilding the de Young Museum, Ruth was full of ideas. She thought it should be located where it had always been, in Golden Gate park, and that it should have an education tower. Ruth attended the 2006 opening, in a wheelchair. A permanent exhibition of Ruth’s wire sculptures hangs in the tower lobby.
Albert died in 2008 and Ruth’s own fragile health kept her from attending the funeral. When her children broached the sale of a painting for the sake of Ruth’s home care, she came once again to the notice of New York’s art market. One of her early works sold for $1.4 million and Ruth was recognized as an important mid-century modern artist. She died in her sleep in 2013.
At a memorial service, her son Xavier said his mother was known for “patience, passion, talking eyes, no complaints.” In an interview, her daughter Addie said, “her true legacy is the art of living … the highest art is the art of living well and she managed to do that.”
Ruth’s story is well-told by Marilyn Chase in Everything She Touched [published 2020]. I have lived around Ruth Asawa’s art for years, as I consider San Francisco home. My sister and I recently reminded each other of the delightful mermaid fountain in Ghirardelli Square. And I am completely in agreement with Ruth’s methods of making an art of your own life.
