A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa (ages 5-8, introduction to Japanese-American artist and sculptor, includes activity for making a paper ... and teaching tools for parents and educators)

by Andrea D'Aquino

Hardcover, 2019

Call number

J B ASA

Publication

Princeton Architectural Press (2019), Edition: Illustrated, 40 pages

Description

"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."--Publisher's website

User reviews

LibraryThing member Lisa2013
This is a good basic short biography about Ruth Asawa. The information is interesting, both her biographical information and the parts about her art education at Black Mountain College. I appreciated how the narrative and art examples showed the importance of the natural world in her life and work.
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Ruth grew up in a farming family and I love her quote: “Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get a lot done.” My favorite quote by her is: “An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.”

The illustrations do capture the artist and her art.

I do wish there had been more photographs, especially of the art, but also of Ruth and the people and places in her life. The two pages at the end that have an Author’s Note, a More About Ruth Asawa section and a resources list have the only photo. It’s of Ruth and one of her sculptures. I’m incredibly glad that it’s included but I wanted even more. The very last two pages of the book shows step by step how to make a dragonfly with paper, glue, and scissors.

This book was approved by the family/Estate of the artist.

Ruth Asawa is a San Francisco institution. A cousin of mine, in my father’s generation, was friends with her. My cousin was also an artist, though not a professional, and I think one main reason this cousin (on my father’s side) and my mother were friends is they both appreciated art, and I first learned ot appreciate art via my mother and Asawa’s work via my cousin. I’ve always liked Ruth Asawa’s work and felt closer to it because of this connection so I was excited to find this book in one of my Book Riot emails. I’ve already read one Asawa art book and there are others. I’d like to read more and definitely want to see more of her sculptures.

3-1/2 stars. Might be a 4-1/2 if multiple photos of the art and the artist had been included.

I want to read more and might check out a book or two listed in the back, and more books too.
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ISBN

1616898364 / 9781616898366
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