A Life Made by Hand tells the story of a pioneering Japanese American artist whose work is collected in major museums around the world. In Ruth Asawa’s hands, simple wire turned into graceful sculptures as light as air. Inspired by the world around her, Asawa saw beauty in the ordinary: the webs of spiders, wings of insects, and drops of water found in the garden on the farm where she spent her childhood. She studied at the historic Black Mountain College, an unusual school filled with brilliant thinkers like herself. “As an artist,” she said, “is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.” Andrea d’Aquino’s lush collages and engaging text celebrate Asawa’s remarkable career.

Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) was an influential and award-winning sculptor, a beloved figure in the Bay Area art world, and a devoted activist who advocated tirelessly for arts education. This lushly illustrated book by collage artist Andrea D’Aquino brings Asawa’s creative journey to life, detailing the influence of her childhood in a farming family, and her education at Black Mountain College where she pursued an experimental course of education with leading avant-garde artists and thinkers such as Anni and Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg. Delightful and substantial, this engaging title for young art lovers includes a page of teaching tools for parents and educators.

MEASUREMENTS
8.45 x 0.5 x 11.1 inches
12.4 oz

LANGUAGE
English

PUBLISHER
Princeton Architectural Press, 2019

PAGES
Hardcover, 40 pages

OTHER
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1616898364
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1616898366