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Untitled

Wire
23 inches diameter
Now on view: AC Hotel, Spartanburg, South Carolina

As exhibited in:
Roots/Routes: Mobility and Displacement in Art of the American South, 2023, Richardson Family Art Center, Wofford Collecge, Spartanburg, South Carolina

As a Japanese American teenager during World War II, Ruth Asawa learned to draw in a California internment camp. While Quaker scholarships later underwrote her matriculation at Milwaukee State Teachers College, pervasive prejudice prevented her from securing a placement for the requisite student teaching, and she was unable to complete her degree. Attracted to Black Mountain College’s progressive ideals and cultural diversity, Asawa enrolled in 1946. During her three years on campus, she became a devotee of Josef Albers, who, as a matter of principle and practicality, encouraged her to utilize any materials available. Resourceful experimentation led Asawa to fabricate geometric sculptures using ordinary wire, a material she wove and looped to produce intricate forms of positive and negative space. Often suspended like mobiles to cast intriguing shadows, Asawa’s airy sculptures recall organic shapes such as dandelions, tumbleweeds, or neurons.