Collection context
Summary
- Abstract:
- The papers of artist Ruth Asawa relate over eighty years of her life and career, with documentation concerning her art and commissions as well her involvement in arts education, civic art, and art administration.
- Extent:
- 236 Linear Feet : 299 containers (275 boxes, 23 map folders, 1 tube)
- Language:
- English .
- Preferred citation:
-
[identification of item], Ruth Asawa papers (M1585). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The papers of Ruth Asawa relate over eighty years of her life and career, with documentation concerning her art and commissions as well her involvement in arts education, civic art, and art administration. The collection includes correspondence, notes, memoranda, transcripts, exhibition notices and other publicity, articles and publications, design sketches, blueprints and plans, photographs, and audiovisual media. The majority of correspondence is incoming, with some drafts of outgoing, including some from her husband Albert Lanier, particularly in the 1950s. Asawa retained her maiden name for her art, but otherwise used Lanier.
Although the collection has been divided into broad series, there are countless intersections between the various spheres of her life. References between especially relevant series have been noted. Beyond Asawa's own art and advocacy work, her papers chronicle the mid-to-late 20th century art, design, and architecture worlds, as well as the civic and cultural life of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work with the San Francisco Art Commission, the California Arts Council, and other organizations, as well as her close friendship with other artists such as Imogen Cunningham, are especially valuable in this regard. In addition, her personal experiences as an internee during World War II, attending Black Mountain College, and raising a large family as a working artist provide further research opportunities.
Together, the Ruth Asawa papers serve to reinforce the values she fought for: the experience of making art as creative thinking and problem solving, breaking down false barriers between art and science, and fostering an inclusive engagement with the arts among people of all ages, but especially young people.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Ruth Aiko Asawa Lanier (1926–2013) was a sculptor, painter, and printmaker acclaimed for her biomorphic wire forms and public art installations, as well as her activism in art education. Asawa was born in the agricultural community of Norwalk, California on January 24, 1926, to Japanese immigrant parents Umakichi and Haru. She was the fourth of seven children. Her father was a truck farmer, and the family worked in the fields to support the business. Asawa showed an aptitude for art at an early age. In 1939, she won a school art competition with her drawing of the Statue of Liberty. On Saturdays, she attended a community Japanese language and cultural school, where she practiced calligraphy. Although Asawa had hoped to attend art school in Los Angeles, World War II and the signing of Executive Order 9066 changed everything. She was sixteen years old in February 1942 when her father was arrested by FBI agents and separated from his family for the next six years. A few months later, the family received orders to relocate. Asawa's mother, who knew very little English, had to orchestrate the closing of the farm on her own. They were at the Assembly Center at Santa Anita racetrack for six months, and were later moved to a more permanent camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. Thanks in part to a sympathetic teacher, Ruth excelled in her art classes, and became the art editor of the class yearbook. She graduated from Rohwer High School in 1943, at a time when certain Nisei were permitted to leave camp to continue their studies, as long as they stayed away from the coasts.
She applied and was admitted to the Milwaukee State Teachers College on a scholarship sponsored by the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, an initiative of the American Friends Service Committee. She studied drawing, weaving, pottery, painting, printmaking, and jewelry with Robert von Neumann, Elsa Ulbricht, Winifred Phillips, and Joseph Friebert, intending to become a schoolteacher. To support her education, Asawa found work as a domestic servant and measuring hides in a tanning factory. In the summer of 1944, a teacher and several students traveled to Black Mountain College, an experimental school in North Carolina, for a workshop series known as the Summer Institute, and returned with positive reports. Ruth considered attending the summer of 1945, but instead she and her sister Lois traveled to Mexico City to study Mexican art and history. Among her instructors was designer Clara Porset, who also told Ruth about Black Mountain College. After attending the college's 1946 Summer Institute, Asawa decided to continue at Black Mountain. She spent three transformative years there under the guidance and instruction of teachers such as Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller, who became lifelong friends and mentors. She also met her husband Albert Lanier at Black Mountain College. Albert had transferred from Georgia Tech to study architecture and design. In 1947, Asawa returned to Mexico on a trip again sponsored by the Quakers, where she observed local techniques for crocheting baskets which would inspire later work in wire.
In June of 1949, Ruth traveled to San Francisco to join Albert, who had come out earlier to find a job and aplace to live. They were married a month later, and lived on Jackson Street in downtown's produce district. Ruth continued her studies by taking silkscreening, drawing and dance classes at San Francisco State College. The 1950s and 60s saw Ruth diving headlong into painting, drawing, paper folding, printing, casting, and her innovative crocheted wire forms. In addition to Albert's work as an architect and draftsman, they both began working in industrial design, creating and selling fabric patterns and other designs, as well as promoting Ruth's wire sculpture as an interior through Laverne Originals. However, they soon chose to focus on developing Ruth's career in the art world, which at the time meant New York. A series of successful and favorably reviewed shows at Manhattan's Peridot Gallery led to national exposure. Asawa has held major solo retrospective exhibits at the San Francisco Museum of Art (1973), the Fresno Art Center (1978 and 2001), the Oakland Museum (2002), the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum (2006), and the Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, 2007).
Aside from her wire sculptures, Asawa is perhaps best known for the many public commissions she created in the Bay Area. Her most famous public sculptures are "Andrea," the mermaid fountain at Ghirardelli Square (1966); the Hyatt on Union Square Fountain (1973); the "Buchanan Mall (Nihonmachi) Fountains" (1976); "Aurora," the origami-inspired fountain on the San Francisco waterfront (1986) and the "Japanese-American Internment Memorial Sculpture" in San Jose (1994). She also served as guest faculty at San Francisco State University, where she worked with landscape architects to create the outdoor "Garden of Remembrance" (2002).
In addition to her full-time work as an artist and activist, Ruth and her husband raised six children: Xavier, Aiko, Hudson, Adam, Addie, and Paul. In 1968 Asawa joined Sally Woodbridge and other parents to found the Alvarado Arts Workshop at Alvarado Elementary School, where her three youngest children were enrolled. With limited financial support and using cheap or recycled materials such as milk and egg cartons, leftover paint, scrap fabric, and bakers' clay, they began to bring working artists in to work with the students. Ruth formulated a teaching philosophy based on her personal experience: children develop as critical thinkers by practicing art and gardening. With the arrival of busing in San Francisco, the Alvarado program spread to other schools. This expansion was helped greatly by the 1973 federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program, which provided resources for artists to teach throughout San Francisco. Building on the Alvarado model, Ruth was central to the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA) high school, which was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010.
Asawa served on the San Francisco Art Commission, the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and on the Board of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the American Conservatory Theater, and SCRAP. She received honorary doctorates from San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and California College of the Arts, and in 1999 she received the Bachelor of Arts degree from the Milwaukee State Teachers College that she had been denied as a student in 1946. In 1982, February 12 was declared Ruth Asawa Day in San Francisco. Ruth Asawa died on August 5, 2013, at her home in San Francisco at age 87.
Adapted from Wakida, Patricia. "Ruth Asawa." Densho Encyclopedia.
- Arrangement:
-
Asawa's papers were organized by her family prior to their arrival at Stanford, and for the most part this arrangement was retained. Most files are chronologically ordered. Although there is considerable overlap throughout the various series, the following general categories were used:
1. Correspondence, Professional
2. Public Art Projects
3. Art Projects
4. Art
5. Correspondence, Artists and Colleagues
6. Lectures, Workshops, Classes, Events
7. Writing and Transcripts
8. Alvarado Arts Workshop and Alvarado Elementary School
9. San Francisco School of the Arts
10. Ruth Asawa Fund
11. Education and Schools, General
12. Student Art and Correspondence
13. Black Mountain College
14. Public Service
15. Activism and Advocacy
16. Fellowships and Grants
17. Awards and Honors
18. Correspondence, Personal
19. Calendars, Planners, Notebooks, etc.
20. Clipping Files, Bibliography
21. Biographies and Portfolios
22. Juvenalia, School
23. Japanese American Internment
24. Family
25. Miscellaneous Photographs and Media
26. Clippings by Asawa
27. Addenda
- Physical location:
- Special Collections and University Archives materials are stored offsite and must be paged 36-48 hours in advance. For more information on paging collections, see the department's website: http://library.stanford.edu/spc.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
The materials are open for research use. Note that material must be requested at least 36 hours in advance of intended use. Selected audiovisual media have been reformatted and are available for access via the Special Collections Reading Room.
- Terms of access:
-
While Special Collections is the owner of the physical and digital items, permission to examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or assigns.
- Preferred citation:
-
[identification of item], Ruth Asawa papers (M1585). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
- Location of this collection:
-
Department of Special Collections, Green Library557 Escondido MallStanford, CA 94305-6004, US
- Contact:
- (650) 725-1022