“Learn something. Apply it. Pass it on so it is not forgotten.” — RUTH ASAWA

Artist Ruth Asawa believed that art was part of everyday life. She used simple materials to make sculptures, drawings, prints, paintings, and public art. Many of her monuments, which can still be seen throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in California, where she lived and worked, were a result of collaboration in which Asawa invited the local community, especially children, to contribute.

At the DWeb Dough In, we will create a baker’s clay mural — from scratch!

What is a “Dough In”?

As an artist, Ruth Asawa forged a groundbreaking practice through her ceaseless exploration of materials and forms. In 1973, during the opening of her first San Francisco Museum of Modern Art retrospective, Ruth Asawa held what she called a “dough-in,” a communal experience that was part baking, part art, and part fun. Asawa’s recipe for a batch of baker’s clay, a white nonedible substance, went something like this: measure out 4 cups of flour and 1 cup of salt, then combine it with 1½ cups of water and hand it over to a group of kids to do the mixing. Some 1,000 parents and children took part, popping their creations into an oven in the café downstairs.

About Artist Ruth Asawa

“Art is doing. Art directly deals with life.”

Ruth Asawa was born in 1926 in Norwalk, California. Her parents Umakichi and Haru Asawa, immigrants from Japan, were truck farmers who grew seasonal crops such as strawberries, carrots, green beans, and tomatoes. Due to discriminatory laws against the Japanese, her parents were not allowed to become American citizens or own land in California.

From the age of six, Ruth worked to help support her family. Her path to a creative life was meandering, but she always managed to find fertile ground. During World War II, about 120,000 people of Japanese descent were forcibly relocated and incarcerated in ten concentration camps in the United States. The Asawa family was sent to Santa Anita race track in California, where Ruth found her way to drawing classes led by Disney animators. While interned in the Rohwer Relocation Center in Arkansas, Ruth tended her family garden, grown from precious seeds saved by her mother. After leaving Rohwer in 1943, Asawa attended Milwaukee State Teachers College on scholarship, but was unable to find a teaching position because of continued hostilities towards the Japanese. Ruth's friends persuaded her to join them at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an experimental liberal arts school. There, Ruth studies art with Josef Albers, who immigrated to the United States after the closing of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. In 1949, interracial marriages were illegal in all but two states, California and Washington, so Ruth and architect Albert Lanier travel West to get married. Ruth Asawa sets down roots in San Francisco, tending to her growing family, her art, and what she would later identify as her life’s most important work — the schools.

In 1968, Asawa co-founded the Alvarado Arts Workshop, an innovative program that brought professional artists into schools to work with children. At its peak, the program served 50 San Francisco's public schools— employing artists, musicians, and gardeners, while involving parents in public education. In 2010, the San Francisco School of the Arts was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in her honor. In 2013, Ruth Asawa died of natural causes at her San Francisco home at the age of 87.

Today, Ruth Asawa’s legacy is proudly cared for by her grandchildren, and a retrospective exhibition of her work is currently at the Guggenheim Bilbao.