Born in 1926 and raised on a truck farm during difficult times for Japanese-Americans, Ruth Asawa has dedicated her life to bringing the beauty of art to succeeding generations of students as a means to inspire them and help them overcome barriers and prejudices.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American government interned Asawa and her family, stripping them of their rights, dignity, and freedoms as American citizens. As fate would have it, three fellow internees, artists from Walt Disney Studios, introduced Asawa to art, liberating her aspirations and imagination to regions far beyond the camp’s boundaries. She graduated from high school in the Rohwer detention camp. Although she attended the Milwaukee State Teacher's College, Asawa could not find a student teaching job due to wartime racial prejudice against Asians and Asian-Americans. But Asawa did not give up on art. She sought and gained entrance into Black Mountain College in North Carolina, studying with masters Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, and Iliya Bolotowsky. For the opportunity given, Asawa has returned the gift many times over: she has spent her entire life making art and teaching young children the life of art -- and the art of living.

In 1968, Asawa brought practicing artists into elementary schools, expanding the introductory programs to some fifty schools. Asawa created the Mermaid Fountain at San Francisco’s famed Ghirardelli Square (1968), and the city’s landmark Hyatt Fountain at Union Square (1973), using materials the children worked with as her medium. Her pupils’ youthful creations literally live in the art she has created. Asawa played an instrumental role in establishing the San Francisco School of the Arts, a high school for students interested in pursuing performing and visual arts, and has successfully steered the often financially strapped school district to hire professional artists to train, work with, and follow up on students’ progress.

Ruth Asawa's teachers -- among them Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller -- taught her, "that there is no separation between studying, performing the daily chores of living, and creating one's own work." She has lived this philosophy in a career that has made her a driving force in the introduction of art programs in schools, bringing to life possibilities of seeing the world anew to generations of young students.

To learn more about Ruth, please visit:
www.ruthasawa.com.

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