Ruth Asawa, 87, Inspires Others With Art
http://www.csa.us/email/spirit/ssarticles/0713SeniorSpotlight.html
Ruth Asawa started her life in a Japanese-American internment camp. Rather than being bitter, she credits her rich and long life as an artist to her early hardships. Click here to view article.
When Ruth Asawa was 16, she and her family were removed from their home in Norwalk, California, and moved to Japanese -American internment camps, first to the Santa Anita race track in California and then to Rohwer, Arkansas. Ruth’s father was arrested, and she wouldn’t see him for another six years. It was 1942, when fear of the Japanese had caused the U.S. government to relocate Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast to remote camps.
This would be a traumatic upheaval for anyone, yet for Ruth, the consequences were ultimately positive. “I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one,” she said in 1994, when she was 68 years old. “Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the internment, and I like who I am.”
Ruth went on to become a well-known artist. Her work—sculptures, paintings and drawings—has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Oakland Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco.
Ruth became an artist after her desired career as a teacher was thwarted by lingering anti-Japanese sentiment and she was unable to get a teaching internship. Instead, she studied art at Black Mountain College, where she met her future husband, Albert Lanier, and married against the wishes of their families. The couple decided to live in San Francisco, a city they believed would be hospitable to an interracial couple and would provide a vibrant arts community.
In 1982, Ruth started receiving commissions to make public art. That same year, she became interested in developing arts programs in schools, which resulted in a public high school for the arts. In 2010, the School of the Arts High School was named for Ruth and is now the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Her teaching philosophy is based on her personal experience: Children develop as creative thinkers and problem solvers by practicing art and gardening.
A major advocate for art, Ruth has sat on several arts councils, including the National Endowment for the Arts (1977) and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
In 1985, Ruth was diagnosed with lupus and has never regained her former strength, although the disease remains in remission. In 2002, she reduced her public engagements due to her declining health.
Even if she’s not actively engaged in art, her creative spirit lives on at Ruth’s Table, an arts program in San Francisco that brings together people of all ages, cultures and talents. At Bethany Center, a low-income senior home, residents gather around the table that once sat in Ruth’s home, which she opened to artists, politicians, homeless people and whoever was interested.
“Education doesn’t end at 65,” said Jerry Brown, Bethany Center’s director. “It’s truly amazing to see people engaging, creating, socializing and talking to people that they’ve never met before. The whole experience helps them eat better and sleep better, and it makes the body whole.”
Sources: Ruth’s Table
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