Ruth Asawa Lanier

Ruth Asawa, 1980

Ruth Asawa was born in 1926 in Norwalk, California to a family of Japanese truck farmers. The middle child of seven, everyone in the family had to work hard. By age 10, Ruth wanted to be an artist. In 1942, her father was pulled out of his strawberry field and taken away to detention. The rest of the family was ordered to report to a relocation center at the Santa Anita racetrack. 

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.

Mary Garth Vincy

Rachel Power, Middlemarch 1994

Most people who read Middlemarch [published in 1871-1872 by George Eliot] assume that Dorothea Brooke is the main character. But Middlemarch, a provincial town in the English Midlands, is full of characters. I liked Mary Garth best.

Mary grew up a little hoyden, a boisterous tomboy, playing especially with her neighbor Fred Vincy. We first meet her at 22, when she has grown up short, plain and nut-brown. She is working at Stone Court as a companion and nurse to old Mr. Featherstone, a wealthy landlord at the end of his life. Mr. Featherstone has always favored Fred, but Fred is idle, spoiled and hoping to inherit some of Featherstone's money.

We are treated to the delightful picture of Mary’s parents’ home, where her mother is teaching her youngest children their letters, while also making pies and doing some washing. Mary’s father is a very capable farm and land manager who works for others, but is too kind, not always getting paid, thus making his family “live in a small way.” 

Fred begs Mary to marry him, based on their long friendship. But Mary is “shrewdly bitter. Honesty was her reigning virtue.” “How can you stand to be so idle?” She asks Fred. “I will give you no encouragement.” In fact Mr. Garth stands surety on a debt Fred has incurred, and when Fred cannot pay, Mrs. Garth and Mary’s small savings must be used to pay it.

As Mr. Featherstone is dying, he begs Mary to take his keys and burn one of the wills he has made. She will not touch any of it. After Featherstone’s death, when the wills are read, it is found that Fred was to inherit £10,000, but this bequest has been superseded by a later will. Fred is in despair and falls ill.

Mary feels she must take another situation, a teaching job, but when her father gets more work, he tells her she may stay home and help her mother. Fred goes back to school and finishes, but he doesn’t want to become a cleric. He is afraid to ask Mary again about marriage, but asks his friend Farebrother to find out for him if there is any hope. In the process, Fred finds that Farebrother himself had some hope of marrying Mary. Mary says Fred must do something worthy, but she has a strong feeling for him. “You are too delightfully ridiculous,” she mocks.

Mr. Garth finds he has too much work and begins to train Fred to help him. Fred loves to be outdoors and promises to work hard. Mrs. Garth is not convinced, but she will wait and see. We find the Garth children under the apple tree, reading Ivanhoe! Mary is happy about Fred’s work. “I have a very secular mind,” she says, amusement in her glance. She cannot see that Fred would have been a good churchman.

Later, as a result of his own folly, the banker Bullstrode must leave Middlemarch. He wants to do something for his loyal wife’s family and she and Mr. Garth agree to place Fred on Bullstrode’s farm at Stone Court. Fred will manage it and he and Mary can marry. Mr. Garth finds Mary in a pink kerchief in the garden, swinging her little sister. She says her feelings for Fred haven’t changed. Fred can hardly believe it when Mary tells him about the plan.

Fred and Mary do marry and live in solid, mutual happiness. Fred becomes a good farmer and eventually can purchase stock of his own. He remains interested in horses, but when taking dangerous jumps at a hunt, sees Mary and their three sons in his mind and moderates his actions. Mary writes a small book on education. They maintain a bright hearth at Stone Court until they are both white-haired.

Middlemarch is full of the most delicate and intricate relations between the characters’ inner lives, their aspirations and their feelings for one another. For instance, Mary’s mother would rather Mary align herself with good Mr. Farebrother, but she accepts Mary’s choice. And Farebrother steps out to preserve Fred from sliding back into idle ways. Mary is staunch. She likes Fred best.

Our main characters are often related. Mr. Garth refuses to work for Bullstrode once he understands the banker’s shady past and ill-gotten gains. But Bullstrode’s wife is Fred’s aunt, and she sets out to do something for Fred’s family. Mary’s path does not cross with Dorothea’s, but Fred’s sister Rosamund makes an important revelation to Dorothea.

Essentially the book is a morality tale, describing the relations of people in one town. I did not find it very scenic or atmospheric, and in fact the most charming scenes all involve Mary and her family! Middlemarch has been looming for a long time in my mind, as a book I should have read. Somehow I kept putting it off! But I am happy to now understand its indelible characters, the lofty ideas of Dorothea and Will Ladislaw, the regret with which Lydgate gives in to his pretty wife’s need for money and status, and the inexorable way Bullstrode’s early grasping at money cannot be excused by his later Christian justifications.

There is more to the book: politics and reform, medical advances, farming practices and art are all glancingly brought in. It is set in 1828 and the question of whether change can happen without violent revolution hangs over it. The reforms in England of 1832 seem to indicate that yes, they can. And the high principles of some of the characters, including Mary and Dorothea, show some of how this can happen.