U.S. #5507
2020 55¢ Ruth Asawa
Issue Date: August 13, 2020
First Day City: San Francisco, CA
Type of Stamp: Commemorative
Printed by: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Offset
Format: Pane of 20
Self-Adhesive
Quantity Printed: 18,000,000
Ruth Asawa is best known for her intricate wire sculptures. She was fascinated by the "possibilities of transforming cold metal into shapes that emulate living organic forms."
Asawa was inspired to weave wire following a trip to Mexico in 1947. During that drip, she had watched local artists crochet egg baskets. She was intrigued by their technique and the way they took flat materials and transformed them into three-dimensional objects.
Upon returning home, Asawa adopted this weaving technique using wire, which was available in abundance on the farm where she lived. While she began weaving baskets, she soon started using the wire to recreate her own drawings as well as objects from nature.
Asawa's sculptures usually began with a center stem with anywhere from 200 to 1,000 wires. These wires then branched out into geometric forms. Both the inside and outside of her sculptures were visible. The sculptures enclosed the space without concealing it. When hung from the ceiling, the shadows they cast became part of the artwork itself. This was often considered teh hallmark of her work.
Asawa saw her work as a way of drawing in space which could only be done with a line, because, as she stated, "a line can go anywhere."