Many moons ago, I graduated college with a studio art degree. I was a metal sculptor and trained under Leonard DeLonga, a well-known and much-beloved artist from New York. I worked in bronze and steel as well as dabbling in stone carving, but my greatest love was welding and bronze casting. DeLonga made the ordinary studio experience into an alchemical ceremony, where we learned not only the technical skills but the intuitive and spiritual side of what it means to forge and melt metals as a communal ritual.
Although I never met Ruth Asawa, I lived in San Francisco during years that overlapped with her, 2002–05. We both lived in Noe Valley, likely blocks apart, yet I was not aware of her at that time. Life is ironic in this way, where we later discover that our paths may have crossed with someone special in the grocery store or post office. Yet it is not until we see a retrospective of their sublime work at a famous museum that we begin to get in touch with someone who might have been our neighbor.
Ruth Asawa’s sculptures deeply moved me on viewing them in person. They are very interesting and appealing in print form, but their spatial qualities cannot be appreciated until one experiences them in three dimensions. In contrast to when I applied for an MFA program and was told that my entry work did not sufficiently transform the materials, Asawa transformed her materials in such impressive and magical ways that it is not always evident how she completed her woven-wire sculptures. I read that she used a crochet method, but who can so delicately crochet metal wire beside her?
I was fascinated to learn that she studied traditional basket weaving in Mexico and used these techniques in her wire sculpture assembly. Spending time in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), I was overwhelmed by the sheer quality and quantity of the works the museum has curated. Multiple large exhibition rooms highlight the depth and breadth of Asawa’s mastery of not only wire but other methods and media.
I went to the exhibition with my friend Anne, an accomplished Bay Area architect. She was also moved by the hanging wire sculptures, particularly those with open-edge shaping. We talked about how these resembled ethereal sea creatures, sea lettuce, or kelp, and how their movement as well as their shadows informed their beauty, construction, and presence. Since ancient times, experiencing art in person has been a deeply spiritual experience where one peers into the mind of the maker. I am particularly fond of looking at art before reading any artist’s statements or articles about them. I want to directly experience their presence and how they move and relate to space. As a sculptor, I am always aware of space for better or worse. I am unusually adept at estimating volumes or measurements before pulling out a measuring tape or other tool. I’m not sure how useful this is for real life. I am particularly fond of landform art and large-scale sculpture that expresses its relationship to the larger space whether interior or exterior.
Making art, viewing art, and experiencing art in public spaces are all ways of opening our mind to the levels below conceptual thought. Our thoughts may flow more freely, or dissipate into space as our physical body relates to forms and shapes as we view or walk around or under them. This has a relationship to our meditative mind, attempting to let go of ordinary thinking, to let space itself open. To potentially open ourselves to the unknown, the indescribable, ineffable something that artists and poets attempt to approximate: a wordless, beyond-thought state.
Perhaps the very best artists are those who provoke and present shapes, forms, colors, textures, patterns, and experiences—through sound, visuals, movements and other media—to provoke us into new states of awareness. Our beingness or embodiment can help us loosen our ties to ordinary thinking and ordinary experience. This can affect the depth of our breathing, calming our nervous system and perhaps resetting our vagus nerve. Art allows us to experience more fully in ways that aren’t common during our day-to-day chores, checking off to-do lists, and otherwise trying to get things done.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Asawa’s work and life was the seamless integration of the two. She combined her life path as an artist with having a large family. With her husband Albert Lanier, an architect, she had six children. They lived together in a tall-ceiling house in Noe Valley, San Francisco. Rather than try to sequester herself in a studio in the garden, their living room and whole house was her studio. Her children were a part of art-making. They were invited into the process so that she didn’t have to separate these two halves of her life as so many women and artists must.
Asawa’s life is a great inspiration, especially as she lived in the 1950s and 1960s, when typical roles for housewives did not include doing what they wanted. She was raised with a strong work ethic because her parents were farmers in Southern California. Asawa applied this discipline to her experimentation and study of art and never seemed to waver from creating. She was friends with other artists who became famous such as Buckminster Fuller, Imogen Cunningham, and more. She danced in the Merce Cunningham dance group, which informed her artmaking. Asawa was part of a circle of artists and creatives who were mutually supportive of each other’s artistic path and inquiry.
Asawa’s innovative artistic oeuvre deserves celebration, not only for breaking new ground artistically, but for defying the culturally restrictive norms of the time for women, both at home and in the workplace:
Few artists have blazed their own trail like Ruth Asawa. She ignored artistic hierarchies to forge a groundbreaking art practice. She balanced her career with raising six children. She sought arts education for all and lived as she created: without boundaries or a roadmap, with courage and integrity. (SFMOMA)
May all women and all beings experience creative freedom and the freedom beyond ordinary limits to realize their own true nature.
See more
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective (SFMOMA)
Ruth Asawa (Art & Object)
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Art, Culture, and Healing the World: A Conversation with Haema Sivanesan
Vivid Realizations: A Journey Through Buddhist Art
Expressing the Inner Light: The Luminescent Art of Sarah Brayer
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