Everything She Touched--The Life of Ruth Asawa

By Marilyn Chase.  This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the  face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art.  In this compelling biography, author Marilyn Chase brings Asawa's story  to vivid life. She draws on Asawa's extensive archives and weaves  together many voices—family, friends, teachers, and critics—to offer a  complex and fascinating portrait of the artist. Born in  California in 1926, Ruth Asawa grew from a farmer's daughter to a  celebrated sculptor. She survived adolescence in the World War II  Japanese-American internment camps and attended the groundbreaking art  school at Black Mountain College. Asawa then went on to develop her  signature hanging-wire sculptures, create iconic urban installations,  revolutionize arts education in her adopted hometown of San Francisco,  fight through lupus, and defy convention to nurture a multiracial  family.  Ruth Asawa forged an unconventional path in everything she did—whether  raising a multiracial family of six children, founding a high school  dedicated to the arts, or pursuing her own practice independent of the  New York art market. Her beloved fountains are now San Francisco  icons, and her signature hanging-wire sculptures grace the MoMA, de  Young, Getty, Whitney, and many more museums and galleries across America.  Hardbound: 224 pp.  Silver Lace Wire Earrings Sculpture of Ruth Asawa