Top 28 Quotes & Sayings by Ruth Asawa

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American sculptor Ruth Asawa.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Ruth Aiko Asawa was an American modernist sculptor. Her work is featured in collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Fifteen of Asawa's wire sculptures are on permanent display in the tower of San Francisco's de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, and several of her fountains are located in public places in San Francisco. She was an arts education advocate and the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts, which was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010. In 2020, the U.S. Postal Service honored her work by producing a series of ten stamps that commemorate her well-known wire sculptures.

American - Sculptor | January 24, 1926 - August 5, 2013

Source: Wikipedia

A lot of women wrote to me. Some wrote me long letters on the meaning of the circle and about mythology and about motherhood and the significance or the symbolism of the mermaid and the frogs and the turtles.

Ruth Asawa

Because I had the children, I chose to have my studio in my home. I wanted them to understand my work and learn how to work.

Ruth Asawa

It's important to learn how to use your small bits of time. All those begin to count up. It's not the long amounts of time you have that are important. you should learn how to use your snatches of time when they are given to you.

Ruth Asawa

We used to make patterns in the dirt, hanging our feet off the horse-drawn farm equipment. We made endless hourglass figures that I now see as the forms within forms in my crocheted wire sculptures.

Ruth Asawa

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 Asawa

An artist is not special. An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.

Ruth Asawa

Activism is wasteful.

Ruth Asawa

I'm not so interested in the expression of something, but I'm more interested in what the material can do. And so that's why I keep exploring.

Ruth Asawa

With art, your motor sense should be developed at full capacity.

Ruth Asawa

I no longer identify myself as Japanese or American but a 'citizen of the universe.'

Ruth Asawa

I think you have to teach kids to work, and you can only teach them to work if you work... I can't delegate jobs if I'm not doing it.

Ruth Asawa

I used to unwind the wire tags that labeled the crates of vegetables and took the fine brass and steel wires and braided and twisted them together to make bracelets, rings, and figures.

Ruth Asawa

It wasn't stone. It wasn't welded steel. It wasn't traditional sculpture. They thought it was craft, or something else, but not art. They couldn't define it in the early Fifties when I was starting out.

Ruth Asawa

I had no intentions of going into sculpture but found that sculpture was just an extension of drawing.

Ruth Asawa

If I hadn't spent all those years staying home with my kids and experimenting with materials that children could use, I would never have done the Ghirardelli and Hyatt fountains.

Ruth Asawa

An artist looks at a juice bottle, an egg carton, or a newspaper and sees something valuable in them.

Ruth Asawa

Art can only be taught by artists.

Ruth Asawa

I spent three years there and encountered great teachers who gave me enough stimulation to last me for the rest of my life - Josef Albers, painter; Buckminster Fuller, inventor; Max Dehn, the mathematician, and many others. Through them, I came to understand the total commitment required if one must be an artist.

Ruth Asawa

Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.

Ruth Asawa

I laugh with the sun, and mist that tries so hard to seduce the mountains.

Ruth Asawa

Art is doing. Art deals directly with life.

Ruth Asawa

I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air.

Ruth Asawa

All my wire sculptures come from the same loop. And there's only one way to do it. The idea is to do it simply, and you end up with a shape.

Ruth Asawa

I am interested in finding solutions to problems.

Ruth Asawa

If a nonartist teaches a subject called art, it is nonart.

Ruth Asawa

All my wire sculptures come from the same loop. And theres only one way to do it. The idea is to do it simply, and you end up with a shape.

Ruth Asawa

When you put a seed in the ground, it doesn't stop growing after eight hours. It keeps going every minute that it's in the earth. We, too, need to keep growing every moment of every day that we are on this earth.

Ruth Asawa

The best ideas come unexpectedly from a conversation or a common activity like watering the garden. These can get lost or slip away if not acted on when they occur.

Ruth Asawa

Top 28 Quotes & Sayings by Ruth Asawa

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