Born in Southern California in 1926, the sculptor showed interest in art at a young age, winning a 1939 arts competition.

Asawa and her family were later forced to live in internment camps during the country’s involvement in World War II. The artist lived for five months in two horse stalls at the Santa Anita Racetrack (“The stench was horrible,” recalled Asawa, “the smell of horse dung never left the place the entire time we were there”) before being sent by train to an internment camp in Arkansas.

While imprisoned in the camps, Asawa continued to study art. Her incarceration lasted 18 months.

She later attended Milwaukee State Teachers College and Black Mountain College in North Carolina. But it was a visit to Mexico, where she witnessed villagers making baskets from galvanized wire, that changed her, inspiring her to create the bulbous wire artwork for which she is best known.

“These forms come from observing plants, the spiral shell of a snail, seeing light through insect wings, watching spiders repair their webs in the early morning, and seeing the sun through the droplets of water suspended from the tips of pine needles while watering my garden,” said the artist.

DeYoung Museum

Asawa is also known for her fountains: Her cylindrical, bronze San Francisco Fountain, which features bas-relief scenes of SF landmarks and neighborhoods, can be found outside the Apple Store in Union Square. Asawa recruited more than 100 local school kids to help her create the original model, having the schoolchildren mold images of the city in dough, which she then cast in iron.

Aurora, her origami-inspired fountain at the Embarcadero along the city’s waterfront, is a 13-foot circle made up of triangular steel shapes that neatly frames the Bay Bridge and Yerba Buena Island.