I visited the Ruth Asawa exhibit at SFMOMA

Her creative process was just like mine!

No joke – I felt a kinship walking through the retrospective of her work.

If you live in the Bay Area (and even if you don’t) chances, are you heard about the recent Ruth Asawa exhibit at SFMOMA. 

I got a chance to go a few months ago (wish I could’ve gone for a second time) and it was just as great as everyone’s pictures looked and it was just as great as everybody was talking about. 

Looking inside of another artist’s work process to learn and grow

The best part of the exhibit was, of course, Asawa’s sculptures, but my favorite part of any art exhibit is that you can get a peak inside of the creative process. 

In Asawa’s case, I was impressed by her sketches. And not because they were hyper-detailed, not because they looked exactly like the finished piece, but actually quite the opposite. When I saw the sketches from her exhibit, I thought “wow her process is just like mine!”

Why your creative process doesn’t need to look like everyone else’s

Sometimes you write down a rough sketch of what you want because all you’re doing is reminding yourself of your future project. You don’t need it to be super detailed. You just need a reminder and sometimes a reminder has to be visual. 

Most of the time when I was designing jewelry, I didn’t do very detailed sketches, but sometimes I’d just write down the idea and then go back to whatever else I was working on. Capturing the idea was always more important to me than having a detailed sketch or rendering first.

It was heartening to see in this exhibit how I wasn’t alone. To see another artist out there with a similarly loose process when it came to design like mine.

Getting ideas out of your head and into the world and trusting the process

Because I definitely had metalsmithing teachers who told us to sketch out every detail first to make it more like renderings, but that never really worked for me. I never felt like I needed that as an artist.

Having the idea in my head was enough for me, I could map out the steps later. The idea was there and I trusted my process enough that making more detailed drawings was reserved for working with client’s only. I love planning on the business side of jewelry, but having too much detail in the creative flow wasn’t helpful FOR ME.

This idea of following my personal creative path is what I’ve been musing on lately. As I see new artists starting every day, I want them to be able to follow the creative path that makes the most sense for them, and for them to know that their process doesn’t need to look like mine, or yours. That the path ahead is yours to forge.

Clearly this idea worked for Asawa too because she was prolific, effervescent, and creative until the end.