In review: A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa

Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) was an influential and award-winning Japanese American sculptor, who was very active in introducing arts education to public schools. In ‘A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa’, Andrea d’Aquino uses her own artistic practice to tell the tale of Ruth’s life and art. She reveals how, growing up on a farm, Ruth was surrounded by nature and saw beauty in the ordinary: the webs of spiders, wings of insects, and drops of water found in the garden. With her hands she made tiny animals out of wire and created shapes by folding paper. Studying at the historic Black Mountain College, Ruth encountered other innovative and brilliant creators, such as avant-garde artists and thinkers like Anni and Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg. Having learnt how to basket weave in Mexico, wire became her sculptural medium, creating fascinating and unusual woven shapes that continue to transfix and inspire today. 

Ruth’s respect for the natural world and dedication to all things handmade resonates with collage artist Andrea d’Aquino, who has filled this book with her own charcoal and coloured-pencil drawings and mixed-paper collages, loose and airy just like Ruth’s own work. With this deference to the handmade, the next generation of creative minds are challenged to take note of the world around them and to express themselves with their hands.

A devoted activist who advocated tirelessly for arts education, Ruth co-founded a School Arts workshop that eventually spread throughout San Francisco's public schools. In 1982, she helped found a public high school for the arts, later renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Encouraging creative flair from a young age is also the ethos behind this book, containing reference tools for further learning, and a project to make a paper dragonfly. A great role model for girls, in an art history dominated by males, Ruth Asawa is a fascinating and important artist, possibly unknown to many of us, who deserves the recognition and interest generated by a book of this kind. Perfect for all ages from age 5 years old.