Marilyn Chase is a journalist and teacher, and the author of The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco. She lives in San Francisco.
"Tempting as it is to view Asawa's life as an artistic
rags-to-riches parable, the story is far more shaded and nuanced.
That rich narrative emerges in a scrupulously researched and
lucidly written new book Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth
Asawa by Marilyn Chase." --San Francisco Chronicle
"A fitting homage to this remarkable woman." --The Wall Street
Journal
"Chase follows Asawa's remarkable journey from an artist barely
known outside of the Bay Area to an internationally acclaimed
figure." --ARTnews
"I can't remember being more inspired by an artist's biography."
--Austin Kleon, author of Keep Going and Steal Like an Artist
"Marilyn Chase fascinates readers with the varied chapters of Ruth
Asawa's engrossing life including her adolescence spent in a
Japanese internment camp, her work as an art teacher, her role in a
multiracial family raising six children, her friendships with
artists like photographer Imogen Cunningham, and her reverence for
Mexican basket makers, who provided the inspiration for her unique
wire sculptures." --Smithsonian
"Everything She Touched reveals the emotional life and personal
trials of a social pathbreaker and civic leader. Author Marilyn
Chase connects the barbed wire and dispossession of Asawa's early
life to the artist's transformative approach to spooled metal, and
intimately conveys the teeming creative life inside her home studio
as it filled with six children. The most pronounced through line is
Asawa's deliberately interwoven family and art practice." --KQED
Arts
"Art world recognition for Ruth Asawa keeps climbing higher and,
now, Everything She Touched by Marilyn Chase arrives to tell
Asawa's amazing life story. Full of documents and fantastic
photos--especially those by Imogen Cunningham--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
"Ruth Asawa's vision shaped the artistic landscapes of public and
private spaces, but it is her enduring legacy of life, love, and
family that truly inspires. Through the prisms of grief and glory,
Chase weaves Asawa's unique history into a compelling and sensitive
portrait of a genius whose beauty would not be denied." --Vivienne
Schiffer, author of Camp Nine and producer and co-director of
Relocation, Arkansas: Aftermath of Incarceration
"Thoroughly researched and engaging, Everything She Touched gives
context to the tumultuous times Ruth Asawa lived through and the
forces that shaped her artistic vision and her generous unassuming
spirit. On so many levels, Marilyn Chase's book made me admire Ruth
Asawa even more than I did already." --Delphine Hirasuna, author of
The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American
Internment Camps, 1942-1946
"Undulating in form and almost dreamy in effect, the famous
lantern-like sculptures of Ruth Asawa have been recognizable for
decades. But Asawa's life is as rich in detail and twisting in path
as any one of these designs, as this new biography by Marilyn Chase
makes clear." --Architectural Digest online
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