#uspostalstamps

Today, the images of Ruth Asawa’s (1926–2003) beautiful metal hanging sculptures can be found on the United States Postal stamps and her work is gaining international recognition. Yet, little is known about her life and career. Certainly, her career would have been very different if she had completed the student teaching requirement for her teaching degree at the Milwaukee State Teachers College. But she was advised against it because of anti-Japanese sentiment after World War II.  Unable to complete her degree, Asawa left Wisconsin to join Black Mountain College, a progressive art college founded in 1933 in North Carolina. Ultimately, her experience there changed her life and career as an artist. Her teachers at the Black Mountain College included Joseph Albers, Merce Cunningham, and Buckminster Fuller, and she also met her future husband, architect Albert Lanier.

Asawa was born on January 24, 1926 in Norwalk, California to Umakichi and Haru Asawa, Japanese immigrants who worked as truck farmers. In February 1942, a couple of months after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Asawa’s father was arrested by the FBI and sent to New Mexico. In April of the same year, Asawa, her mother, and five of her siblings were ordered to relocate to the Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia, CA, and then forcibly moved again to the Rohwer Relocation Center in Arkansas where they stayed until September 1943. She would not see her father again until 1948. In total, Asawa spent eighteen months in internment camps before enrolling at the Milwaukee State Teachers College with a scholarship. (Summarized from Ruth Asawa and website.)

Stay tuned for the Part II of life and career of Ruth Asawa.

Image 1: US Postal stamps Image 2: Front cover Image 3: Installation view at David Zwirner, 2017

Ruth Asawa New York, NY: David Zwirner Books, ARTBOOK/D.A.P. [2018] Catalog of the exhibition held at David Zwirner, New York, September 13-October 21, 2017. Exhibition, “Ruth Asawa” HOLLIS number: 99153719112003941