Ruth Asawa

All my wire sculptures come from the same loop. And there's only one way to do it. The idea is to do it simply, and you end up with a shape.

I spent three years there and encountered great teachers who gave me enough stimulation to last me for the rest of my life - Josef Albers, painter; Buckminster Fuller, inventor; Max Dehn, the mathematician, and many others. Through them, I came to understand the total commitment required if one must be an artist.

A lot of women wrote to me. Some wrote me long letters on the meaning of the circle and about mythology and about motherhood and the significance or the symbolism of the mermaid and the frogs and the turtles.

We used to make patterns in the dirt, hanging our feet off the horse-drawn farm equipment. We made endless hourglass figures that I now see as the forms within forms in my crocheted wire sculptures.

I no longer identify myself as Japanese or American but a 'citizen of the universe.'

It's important to learn how to use your small bits of time. All those begin to count up. It's not the long amounts of time you have that are important. you should learn how to use your snatches of time when they are given to you.

If I hadn't spent all those years staying home with my kids and experimenting with materials that children could use, I would never have done the Ghirardelli and Hyatt fountains.

Because I had the children, I chose to have my studio in my home. I wanted them to understand my work and learn how to work.

I am interested in finding solutions to problems.

I had no intentions of going into sculpture but found that sculpture was just an extension of drawing.

With art, your motor sense should be developed at full capacity.

I used to unwind the wire tags that labeled the crates of vegetables and took the fine brass and steel wires and braided and twisted them together to make bracelets, rings, and figures.

Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the internment, and I like who I am.

I laugh with the sun, and mist that tries so hard to seduce the mountains.

If a nonartist teaches a subject called art, it is nonart.

Art can only be taught by artists.

I think you have to teach kids to work, and you can only teach them to work if you work... I can't delegate jobs if I'm not doing it.

It wasn't stone. It wasn't welded steel. It wasn't traditional sculpture. They thought it was craft, or something else, but not art. They couldn't define it in the early Fifties when I was starting out.

I'm not so interested in the expression of something, but I'm more interested in what the material can do. And so that's why I keep exploring.

Art is doing. Art deals directly with life.

Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.

An artist looks at a juice bottle, an egg carton, or a newspaper and sees something valuable in them.

Activism is wasteful.

I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air.

An artist is not special. An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.