Introduction

Narrator: Welcome to Ruth Asawa Through Line, an exploration of over five decades of the artist's extraordinary drawing practice.  For this exhibition, we created a drawing activity guide that visitors of all ages can use! These drawing exercises are similar to ones Asawa used herself, and present a unique way of knowing the world. And if you'd rather just look and listen, that's great too! In this guide you can hear the perspectives of the curator and paper conservator at the museum, artists who’ve been inspired by Asawa, and two of Asawa’s children.

As the exhibition’s title suggests, drawing was a through line in Asawa’s work and remained an active practice throughout her life. She was born in 1926, and grew up on her family’s farm in southern California. She attended Japanese school every weekend, where she learned calligraphy and origami—traditions that she would later adapt to her own creative ends. Art–especially drawing—also sustained her through the sixteen months when she and her family were incarcerated during World War II.Throughout this difficult period, drawing served as a salvation and purpose, an activity that sustained her. She later reflected, 'I think [art] did help with the anger, but I didn't know it at the time.”

The first section of the exhibition is called “Learning to See.” Here, you’ll find works that Asawa made at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. At the time, the German refugee Josef Albers led the art program there. He encouraged students to focus on process, materials, and close observation. Asawa carried the lessons learned at Black Mountain throughout her life, treating drawing as a means of investigating the world—not simply picturing it.