What Do Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Goldsworthy, and Ruth Asawa Have in Common?

Ruth in Her Dining Room with Tied-Wire Sculptures/ Imogen Cunningham 1963

Hanging Looped-Wire Sculptures at the de Young Museum

This month in Great Artist’s Footsteps class, we studied the gorgeous and inspiring sculptural work of Ruth Asawa. Most of the group had never heard of her, even though she is a Bay Area Artist legend.-and we all live in the SF Area.

Ruth Asawa’s work reminds us of the power and magic of turning to nature as one of our greatest teachers.

Asawa’s San Francisco home in Noe Valley was also her art studio—a place where raising six children, sharing meals, welcoming friends, and making art were woven into everyday life. She often conscripted her children and friends to help her make art. In this busy, creative home, she made many works of indescribable beauty.

Asawa twisted wire with her fingers into magnificent, intricate looped sculptures that suggest seedpods, tree roots, and branching plants. These sculptures hang like stacked, transparent baskets, with one shape opening into the next. Their shadows cast layered patterns onto walls. It is stunning to see in person!

Her tied-wire sculptures grew out of a different encounter with nature: a friend brought her a dried plant so twisted and tangled that she tried to construct it in wire to understand how to draw it.

She began gathering wires into bundles, then dividing them into smaller and smaller branches. Her final “tied wire sculptures” feel wonderfully alive—and growing before your eyes.

My Red Hills Georgia O’Keeffee (1938)

Ruth Asawa/Freestanding Tied-Wire, Closed Center, Six-Branched Tree Form

O’Keeffe was also a student of nature and looked closely at flowers, bones, and landscape shapes.

Finally, the artist Andy Goldsworthy often makes art with leaves, stones, ice, and branches.

Artist: Andy Goldsworthy ( Japanese maple leaves stitched together to make a floating chain

For November, I would love to invite you to what happens when we let nature teach us

-What might we discover by zooming into a leaf, drawing it, and trying to paint it?

Let’s dive a little deeper with Ruth Asawa.

“I had to construct it in wire in order to draw it,” Asawa explained.

These experiments became her tied-wire sculptures.

That’s our starting point this month. Find a fallen leaf, a twig, a seedpod, or a dried flower. Look at where it bends, branches, repeats, or leaves an opening.

Try drawing it—or use paper, string, or wire to explore its structure.

You don’t have to know what it will become.

Begin by noticing. And respond with art-making joy!

(This is me learning to crochet with wire-(NOTE: Ruth Asawa did not use a crochet hook)

Below- some hand looped wire ideas from nature~

Please try some sketches, wire ideas — anything inspired by the prompt of using Nature as our Teacher! And share it with us!

Eliz