Everything She Touched. The Life of Ruth Asawa

This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art. In this compelling biography, author Marilyn Chase brings Asawa´s story to vivid life. She draws on Asawa´s extensive archives and weaves together many voices—family, friends, teachers, and critics—to offer a complex and fascinating portrait of the artist. Born in California in 1926, Ruth Asawa grew from a farmer´s daughter to a celebrated sculptor. She survived adolescence in the World War II Japanese-American internment camps and attended the groundbreaking art school at Black Mountain College. Asawa then went on to develop her signature hanging-wire sculptures, create iconic urban installations, revolutionize arts education in her adopted hometown of San Francisco, fight through lupus, and defy convention to nurture a multiracial family. • A richly visual volume with over 60 reproductions of Asawa´s art and archival photos of her life (including portraits shot by her friend, the celebrated photographer Imogen Cunningham) • Documents Asawa´s transformative touch—most notably by turning wire – the material of the internment camp fences – into sculptures • Author Marilyn Chase mined Asawa´s letters, diaries, sketches, and photos and conducted interviews with those who knew her to tell this inspiring story.