SFMOMA Ruth Asawa Retrospective Celebrates Her Art and Life as Educator

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

“An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special,” said San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa. From her studio in her home in Noe Valley, Asawa created crocheted wire sculptures whose shadows are just as evocative as the art itself. But as the mother of six, Asawa was also passionate about arts education and teaching. As a new retrospective of her work and life opens at SF MOMA, we talk about Asawa’s legacy as an artist, teacher, and community member as part of our Bay Area Legends series. Guests: Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family chief curator, SFMOMA; She co-curated the exhibition Ruth Asawa: Retrospective Terry Kochanski, executive director, SCRAP - a nonprofit education and creative reuse center based in the Bayview and founded in 1976 Andrea Jepson, close friend of Ruth Asawa; Jepson served as the model for the fountain "Andrea" in Ghiradelli Square, and also worked with Asawa on her public school education projects Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho LaPuerta, a health resort with 85 years of wellness experience, providing summer vacations centered on well-being. Special rates on three-and-four-night August vacations include sunrise hikes, water classes, yoga, and spa therapies, all set in a backdrop of a dreamy summer sky. A six-acre organic garden provides fresh fruits and
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1:08.7	From KQED.
1:23.6	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:30.2	Ruth Asawa was a sculptor and artist who, in her own words, invested in San Francisco.
1:45.5	And we are so lucky that she did. A new retrospective at SFMOMA shows off how gorgeous her work really was from the mid-1940s until the 2000s when she made her last tender drawings of the plants in her garden.
1:51.4	We'll talk about her celebrated woven wire sculptures, as well as her legacy in the Bay Area art world, with an SFMOMA curator and people who knew and were influenced by Asawa.
1:57.1	It's all coming up next right after this news.
2:11.1	Music It's all coming up next right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
2:13.6	Let me get this out of the way. The new Ruth Asawa retrospective at SFMOMA is outstanding.
2:19.3	One reason is that Asawa's famous gossamer wire sculptures are simply gorgeous and mesmerizing.
2:27.3	They recall simple organic forms and also the 20th century reckoning forced by Einstein's reconceptualizing space time.
2:35.7	How what material so simple could be woven into such complex, multilayered art
2:40.4	is nothing short of miraculous.
2:43.2	But in the context of this exhibition,
2:45.7	the well-known sculpture serve as our portal to the rest of Asawa's work,
	...

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