Meet Marilyn Chase Author of Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa

This event is free to attend. Seating is first come, first served.

Meet the author, find out about a terrific new book, ask questions and hear directly from the author, and get personalized signed books!

Bookshop West Portal is thrilled to welcome back Marilyn Chase for the paperback release of Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa.

You don't need to have read the book to enjoy the event! We do recommend reserving your copy ahead of time:

This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art . In this compelling biography, author Marilyn Chase brings Asawa's story to vivid life. She draws on Asawa's extensive archives and weaves together many voices--family, friends, teachers, and critics--to offer a complex and fascinating portrait of the artist.

Born in California in 1926, Ruth Asawa grew from a farmer's daughter to a celebrated sculptor. She survived adolescence in the World War II Japanese American internment camps and attended the groundbreaking art school at Black Mountain College. She then went on to develop her signature hanging-wire sculptures, create iconic urban installations, revolutionize arts education in her adopted hometown of San Francisco, fight through lupus, and defy convention to nurture a multiracial family.

• This richly visual volume is illustrated with over 70 reproductions of Asawa's art and archival photos of her life, including portraits shot by celebrated photographer Imogen Cunningham.
• It documents Asawa's transformative touch, most notably the way she turned wire--the material of the internment camp fences--into sculptures.
• Additions to the paperback: a foreword by Jonathan Laib, director of the David Zwirner Gallery, and an author's note that charts the continued rise of Asawa's star in the art world and beyond.

Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) is a celebrated and internationally recognized artist best known now for her hand-looped and tied-wire sculptures. Today, her work has found a home in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Ruth Asawa forged an unconventional path in everything she did. Her beloved fountains are now San Francisco icons, and her signature hanging-wire sculptures grace the MoMA, de Young, Getty, Whitney, and many more museums and galleries across America. Everything She Touched invites us to step into Asawa's story so "we can admire the magic of her sculpture and beauty as a person." (Harry S. Parker III, former director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)

By exploring both Asawa's work and her life, Marilyn Chase weaves a captivating tale of courage, vision, and resilience. Her remarkable story offers inspiration to artists and art lovers of every generation.

NEW CONTENT: Since this biography's original publication in 2020, Ruth Asawa's art has been even more widely celebrated and exhibited. The paperback edition incorporates a new foreword and author's note, bringing the book up to date with the latest developments in this exceptional artist's legacy.

Marilyn Chase is an author, journalist, and teacher. She worked for over two decades as a reporter and columnist at the Wall Street Journal and taught journalism to graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford. Her previous books include The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco. She lives in San Francisco with her family.

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