Google Doodle Honors Glenstone Artist

An artist whose sculptures are on display at Glenstone Museum in Potomac is featured on Wednesday’s Google Doodle.

Ruth Asawa, a Japanese-American artist and educator, is the first person Google Doodle is celebrating for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.

Asawa was born in Southern California in 1926 to immigrant farmers. As she grew up during World War II, she and her family were sent to U.S. government internment camps for being Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.

Throughout her life, Asawa has overcome adversity. She pursued her interest in art during her sixteen months of internment, she received a scholarship to pursue art education, and she became a respected artist despite people dismissing her work early in her career.

Google Doodle reached out to Asawa’s children, who shared one of their favorite pieces advice their mother told an interviewer in the 1970s.

Asawa said, “It’s important to learn how to use your small bits of time, your five minutes, your ten minutes. All those begin to count up. … Don’t wait until your children are grown, until your husband is retired. … Learn how to use your snatches of time when they are given to you.”

Ruth Asawa Has Sculptures at Glenstone Museum

Asawa has three sculptures featured at Glenstone Museum in Potomac.

Her sculptures famously incorporate looped wires, a technique that she learned while she was in Mexico; there, wire baskets were made and used for domestic purposes.

Asawa’s sculptures at Glenstone are pictured in the photo below.

The sculpture to the left was created in 1950 and is described as “Hanging Six-Lobed, Two Continuous Interlocking Forms.” The middle sculpture pictured was created in 1954 and is described as “Hanging Four-and-a-Half Open Hyperbolic Shapes That Penetrate Each Other.” The sculpture to the right in the photo is described as “Hanging Six-Lobed, Two-Part, Complex Form within a Form with One Suspended Sphere in the Top Lobe.”

Emily Grebenstein, a communications manager at Glenstone, said that the museum staff was pleasantly surprised when they noticed Asawa featured on Google this morning.

  • Ruth Asawa's sculptures featured at Glenstone Museum (Photo: Ron Amstutz).

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Deirdre Byrne

About Deirdre Byrne

Deirdre Byrne is a social media coordinator for Montgomery Community Media. She can be reached at dbyrne@mymcmedia.org or on twitter at @DeirdreByrneMCM.

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