Untitled (PT.106, Plane Tree #12), 1959

Clara Rojas-Sebesta: We're looking at Ruth Asawa's Plane Tree #12, 1959.

Narrator: Asawa made a number of drawings based on plane trees—or sycamore trees—that grew in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Clara Rojas-Sebesta. 

Clara Rojas-Sebesta: Asawa has created the feeling of the drawings with a large, very wet inked brush. She's using a sumi ink on a thin paper that has responded to that wetness, and you can see a lot of rippling and distortions in the paper that hint to what the materials were that she was using. As the ink dried, the water evaporated, leaving little particles of ink across the surface, which also suggest the textured surface of the sycamore tree. You can also get a sense of the movement of Asawa's hand as she created these circular forms throughout the trunk. And then as she moved out to the branches, she may have splashed or splattered the ink, which creates these smaller branches and tendrils moving out from the branches.

In the lower right corner we also see Asawa's signature stamp, which would have been found on many of her artworks.