{"data":{"id":"34","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":34,"topgoose_id":103,"tms_id":34,"display_name":"Ruth Asawa","sort_name":"Asawa Ruth","display_date":"1926–2013","begin_date":"1926","end_date":"2013","biography":"\u003cp\u003eAs the child of Japanese immigrants living in California, Ruth Asawa was placed in an internment camp for several years during World War II. Because of lingering discrimination after the war and bleak job prospects, Asawa abandoned her pursuit of a teaching degree and in 1946 she enrolled instead at the experimental, nonaccredited Black Mountain College in North Carolina. She planned to study painting and drawing with the influential artist \u003ca href=\"/artists/9\"\u003eJosef Albers\u003c/a\u003e, but the institution’s cross-disciplinary emphasis soon led her to sculpture. This nascent interest flourished after a summer in Toluca, Mexico, where she learned from the local craftspeople how to make the crocheted wire baskets she had admired. The crochet technique requires looping wire around a wooden dowel to produce what the artist described as “a string of e’s.” By repeating this one motion—with adjustments made for the weight of the material or the space between loops—Asawa created undulating, voluminous forms. “The shape comes out working with the wire,” she explained. “You don’t think ahead of time, \u003cem\u003ethis is what I want\u003c/em\u003e. . . . You make the line, a two-dimensional line, then you go into space, and you have a three-dimensional piece.”\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/2260\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNumber 1 – 1955\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (which the artist had to re-create in 1958 because of faulty metal in the original), like many of Asawa’s abstract wire sculptures, is comprised of an outer, vertical structure, inside of which she nestled smaller shapes, often of a differing metal. Suspended from the ceiling, the biomorphic, semitransparent structure creates a multidimensional play of interior and exterior spaces and a constellation of shadows on the wall. The work, according to Asawa, “does not hide anything . . . and inside and outside are connected. Everything is connected, continuous.”\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gray\"\u003eDana Miller and Adam D. Weinberg, \u003ca href=\"https://shop.whitney.org/products/whitney-handbook-of-the-collection\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHandbook of the Collect\u003c/em\u003e\u003cem\u003eion\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2015), 46.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500077806","wikidata_id":"Q7382874","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:29:06.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-23T01:31:01.169-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/34/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/34/exhibitions"}}}}