Ruth Asawa 1926 - 2013

©2013 Tom Jung Photography

When Ruth Asawa passed away on Monday, August 5, San Francisco lost an incredible force in the Art World. Her public art is very much a part of the San Francisco scene. Most recently, her iconic Fountain located in front of the Union Square Hyatt Hotel (345 Stockton Street) was going to be moved to make way for an Apple Store, but the plan was shelved, no doubt due to some quick back-pedaling at City Hall.

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I knew Auntie Ruth as our neighbor who lived down the street. I remember going to her home to play with Hudson, the son nearest to me in age. The house was always alive with creativity. One thing that I remember was the great playroom on the second floor, complete with a slate wall that we used as a gigantic chalk board. It was here that we staged Jack And The Beanstalk in a puppet theater made by Albert Lanier, Ruth's late husband. And on the first floor, there was Ruth's studio. For some reason I remember it as always being dark,  with her incredibly sensuous wire woven sculptures hanging like enormous trees in a surreal forest. And it was in Ruth's home that I learned about the New Yorker magazine, at first as the source of jokes I didn't quite get, and later as the stethoscope placed firmly on the pulse of the New York art and social scene. 

In mid 60's, the family moved to a spacious home designed by Albert, who was an architect by trade, and incidentally my mother's boss at the firm of Lanier and Sherill. Time would pass, and when I was assigned a "photo essay" for a photo class in 1972, I called Ruth so see if she would allow me to do a "Day In The Life" collection of photographs. These photos are the result of two days of shooting.

©2013 Tom Jung Photography

©2013 Tom Jung Photography

Ruth was constantly involved in art projects. On this particular morning, she was setting up a small loom so that her mother could continue on a weaving project. If memory serves, the loom was on a side table in the great room, which might be considered a family room by an architect, but served as a workshop and a display area for the dozens of projects orbiting about in her universe. Her awareness of the three dimensionality of her world is apparent when you looked to the ceiling in the great room, for instead of seeing stars, you found a collection of her signature wire sculptures, appearing to occupy space without displacing it. Looking back the sculptures were like galaxies as seen by the Hubble telescope, looking like clouds held in place by a intricate mesh of woven wire, a sculpting technique she pioneered.

©2013 Tom Jung Photography

This photo show the wire sculptures hanging from the ceiling of Ruth's home. At the left is author Sally Woodbridge who was doing research for her book on the creation of Ruth's iconic fountain at the San Francisco Hilton on Union Square. The two are examining a portion of the fountain's many panels, each a diorama of some aspect of the city, sculpted in baker's clay, a mixture of flour, salt, and water, by a small army of friends and school children. There is a wonderful Flicker stream for fountain close-ups by Wally Gobetz. Click here to get a more detailed look.

There is so much that Ruth has done for the Artistic Community in San Francisco. We can be so proud to call her one of our own, somebody who is truly unique, and someone so universally loved for the fantastic world her art helped us to see. San Francisco is a far better place for having her with us, and richer for the gifts she bestowed on the city.