Ruth Asawa sculpts with wire and light

By Martin Tatarka

"Ruth Asawa: Drawing in Space," at the Asheville Art Museum through February 7, 2010, is a compact gem of a show.  With only six sculptures and 18 paintings, it fits nicely into the museum's small mezzanine room between its main gallery floors.

Born in 1926 to a Japanese-American family in a farming community outside Los Angles, Asawa was placed in internment camps in New Mexico and Arkansas with her parents and siblings during World War II.  With a scholarship from a Quaker organization, she attended Milwaukee State Teachers College, intending to teach art.  But she was unable to complete her degree when anti-Japanese sentiment prevented her from getting a practice teaching assignment after the war.

She then spent three years at Black Mountain College, where she studied with Joseph Albers, Buckminister Fuller and Merce Cunningham.  She planned to be a painter.  However, on a 1947 study trip to Mexico she learned to weave with metal, and she then honed that skill for the next 50 years as she developed her signature sculpture.

Nearly all of the work in the exhibition is from the late 1940s and 50s and reflects the sensibilities of post-war and mid-century art concerns.  Form is organic but tight and balance rules.  Action or gestural painting hadn’t reach firm ground till the 60s. 

The six wire sculptures hang from the ceiling and are spread through the gallery.  There is room to walk around the pieces.  The size of the work is in the three-foot range on a manageable, human scale.  They are made with medium gauge wires of copper, brass and iron and look like they might have been knitted.  The shapes are very organic, sea forms and phytoplankton that could be pulsating through water.  Repeated shapes are often joined together or mirrored.

The use of wire from this period can be seen in the works of Alexander Calder, Barbra Hepworth and David Smith, to mention a few. These artists used wire in their sculpture to extend the drawn line in space, to create direction or as a supporting line. When Asawa went to Mexico she worked with a basket maker who crocheted wire into baskets, so her use of wire comes from a craft tradition and differs greatly from other artists working in wire.

Surprise shadows

Look beyond the sculpture and you'll find some surprises in the shadows on the walls and floor.  Maybe shadow isn’t quite the word, as these airy works do not block out light.  We are not seeing silhouettes of the sculptures but new images transformed by light, giving the work new life.  These shadows are equally worthy of our attention as are the objects.  "I’m interested in the economy of a line, making something in space, enclosing it without blocking it out, so it is still transparent," Asawa has said.  If we think of the wire as a flexible line then these sculptures are indeed drawings in space. 

A small black and white ink drawing called "Sketch for Sculpture, done around 1950, suggests these shadows are intended.   Done on a black and white field, the drawing has the same intense looping of her hanging pieces.  As the drawing drifts into the black field, Asawa changes from black to white ink to complete the image. 

Nearly all of the sculptures are untitled.  I like titles and often find they help me key into a work.  They also help when I want to refer to a piece.  However, after watching the video "Ruth Asawa: Spaces and Faces," which is part of the exhibition, and seeing all the sculptures which hang from the ceiling everywhere in her San Franciso home, I understand that finding a name for every one of them would be a chore. 

Of the 18 paintings, a few are noteworthy for their relationship to the sculpture and Asawa's style.  "Printed Cork End," 1950, is just that.   A cork has been cut on one end and stamped in rows and columns on a sheet of paper.  The piece is appealing in its simplicity and strength.  You could lose yourself in the work as each impression is just slightly different from the next.  The repetition and order of the piece is a visual mantra, with each stamp a complete action.  In the sculpture the repetition is mechanical and serves a much different end. 

Graphic exercises

"Blue Triangle Wallpaper" and "Red Meander on Pink," two watercolor and tempera paintings on mat board, are exercises in graphic design to give a specific effect of control and calm.  In this case Asawa provides titles that describe patterns which could go on forever without any particular direction.  What is eye-catching is the contrast of colors.  I suspect Albers would have approved of the hard-edge use of pattern and intense color; his influence is evident here, as it is in "Meander – Curved Line," 1946-49, an ink on paper drawing which provides a foundation for these two later works. 

It's helpful to remember that Albers was initially a design teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1922.  He became a full professor a few years later.  He was an old-school designer who not only worked in the graphic arts but also designed furniture and glass.  After he left Black Mountain he went on to head the Department of Design at Yale.

Look at the painting "Arrows," a 1946-1949 oil on board, and you definitely see the sway of graphic arts.  The direction of the arrows on brown and yellow field scream the information that is so vital to graphic art: Go This Way.  Look closer, however, at the arrows and notice they way they are crafted and the subtle changes in each one.  The colors are solid and flat - black, yellow, white - and feel they could have come out of a glossy magazine advertisement. 

Two exceptions to this controlled atmosphere are the small oil painting "Dogwood Leaf," 1947-49, and a watercolor on paper, "Black Boots," done around the same time.  These paintings seem out of character with the others.  Both are free and loose and the objects which give them their title are not clearly visible.  My first impression of "Black Boots" is of a cityscape.  What I like about these two works is that they give me something to think and feel about.  Their intent is not so well defined as the strong, well-crafted direction of her other work. 

"Ruth Asawa: Drawing in Space" is a quiet little show that gives us much to ruminate over.  Although not a retrospective, it provides a sense of the intent and substance in which she has worked and carried out her life. 

"Ruth Asawa: Drawing in Space," is at the Asheville Art Museum through February 7, 2010.

Ruth Asawa, "Arrows," oil on board, 19 x 12 inches. Collection of Xavier & Gerri Lanier. Courtesy of the Asheville Art Museum. For more images of Ruth Asawa's sculpture, visit www.ruthasawa.com