“A tender and thoughtful rendering of an important artist’s life. Sam Nakahira uses the power and beauty of comics to its fullest to immerse you in the mind and genius of Ruth Asawa. As soon as I finished it, I wanted to read it again!”—Tillie Walden, Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and illustrator
Brave, unconventional, and determined, Ruth Asawa let nothing stop her from living a life intertwined with art.
Renowned for her innovative wire sculptures, Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) was a teenager in Southern California when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forced into camps. Asawa’s family had to abandon their farm, her father was incarcerated, and she and the rest of her family were sent to a detention center in California, and later to a concentration camp in Arkansas. Asawa nurtured her dreams of becoming an artist while imprisoned and eventually made her way to the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
This graphic biography by Sam Nakahira, developed in consultation with Asawa’s younger daughter, Addie Lanier, chronicles the genesis of Asawa as an artist—from the horror of Pearl Harbor to her transformative education at Black Mountain College to building her life in San Francisco, where she would further develop and refine her groundbreaking sculpture.
Asawa never sought fame, preferring to work on her own terms: for her, art and life were one. Using lively illustrations and a dozen photographs of Asawa’s artwork, Ruth Asawa: An Artist Takes Shape is a graphic retelling of her young adult years and demonstrates the transformative power of making art.
Praise
“This comprehensive look at the formative years and lasting legacy of a renowned artist showcases how, with great determination and an unwavering mindset of life and creativity being “one and the same,” Asawa never let anything interfere with her art or her family.”
—Publishers Weekly
"Nakahira poignantly illustrates this harrowing experience, which thousands of Japanese Americans faced during World War II. But she also balances the darkness with moments of joy that those who have faced such atrocities are lucky to find in order to keep going."
—Art News
"The spare text, which combines invented dialogue with reflections from Asawa’s first-person perspective, highlights with subtlety and touches of humor the obstacles women and Japanese Americans faced in mid-20th-century America. An inspiring, beautifully rendered book about an artistic dream that came true."
—Kirkus
"...a diligently researched and charmingly illustrated graphic biography of the life and creative career of the celebrated Japanese American sculptor."
—Publishers Weekly Panel Column
"This graphic novel is a great first step in getting to know who Ruth Asawa was and what her art was about, and Sam Nakahira should be proud of her work."
—Comics Beat
