We encourage everyone to celebrate Ruth Asawa’s centennial by hosting their own Dough In! The recipe and helpful tips, as well as an audio guide with more information about Asawa’s public commissions around the San Francisco Bay Area can be found on RuthAsawa.com.
Don’t forget to tag Ruth Asawa on Facebook and Instagram (@ruthasawaofficial) using the hashtag #ASAWA100.
Friends and Art Volunteers
By Tamra Marshall
I met Nancy Ahn 26 years ago when our children were both in kindergarten at Rooftop K-8 School. Rooftop offered a rich arts program that heavily relied on parent engagement and volunteerism to provide a wide array of experiences in art making and art appreciation. The philosophy “art is for everyone” reflected Ruth Asawa’s vision for arts education that she helped to build in SFUSD and beyond.
Back in the day, Nancy and I were both regular parent volunteers in our children’s classrooms and we both gravitated towards helping out with anything art related. We became “art parents” which meant we would help to plan, prepare for and assist the classroom teachers with weekly art lessons. Nancy & I became great friends during that time and have remained so even after our Rooftop years. We both recently retired and decided to team up again as art volunteers. Just so happens that my son, Ian Marshall, grew up to be a teacher and now is one of Rooftop’s Kindergarten teachers so we had the perfect “in” and were welcomed back for more art making with kids!
Drawing made in 2006 by then fourth grader Ian Marshall. Twenty years later, Ian is a Kindergarten teacher at the public school where he was once a student.
Students were presented with the same puzzle-piece shape and invited to imagine what that shape might become. Over 100 student contributions were put together into a single image for the 2006 Rooftop Run T-shirt.
Being inspired by the 2025 Ruth Asawa retrospective at SFMOMA and her dedication to Arts Education, we decided to use Ruth’s work as a springboard into our art lessons with the kindergartners. Her varied types of materials and processes and use of simple, everyday items to incorporate into art give us lots of ideas for projects with the children. So far we have done vegetable prints, watercolor still life painting, cut paper collage and currently working on a collective storytelling mural with figures made from her baker’s clay dough recipe.
Making the dough is easy and fast… 3 simple ingredients of flour, salt and water, creates a incredible clay like dough that can be used immediately or later in the day. A quick lesson in how the dough can be shaped, textures can be added and how pieces can be stuck together with a quick lick and the students are ready to make.
What we really liked about making with baker’s clay is the simplicity. Easy to mix by hand with just flour, salt and water. We discovered that measuring precisely and mixing the flour and salt together thoroughly before adding the water gave us the best results. The dough is smooth and easy for little hands to shape, roll and build with. It is baked in a regular oven to harden and then ready to paint.
Painting Day
We used liquid water colors which worked great (no need for water except to clean the brushes). Liquid water color goes on with ease and is still a bit transparent and didn’t cover up details and textures in the hardened dough creations. Baker’s clay is such a great medium for students. Very forgiving, flexible, open-ended and just a fun sensory material for children to use.
Room 1 Painting Day (January 16, 2026); photos by Nancy Ahn.
from the ARTchives
RUTH ASAWA:
Transforming the Ordinary (Spring 2004)
How does Ruth Asawa transform the ordinary in her public works at Union Square, Japantown and the Oakland Museum?
“RUTH ASAWA: Transforming the Ordinary“ was the Spring offering for an 2003-2004 art study developed by the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts (JMCA), at that time the Northern California affiliate of the Lincoln Center Institute (LCI) model for arts education. The LCI aesthetic education model focuses on developing students’ critical thinking skills, while building their artistic vocabulary and experience through classroom activities relating to the works of art being studied.
Rooftop’s teachers and parents were trained in special art workshops, working together with JMCA’s teaching artists to devise curriculum and activities around three of Ruth Asawa’s public works, in addition to field trips.
San Francisco Fountain, Union Square, 1970-1973
Tied-Wire Sculpture, Oakland Museum of California, 1974
Origami Fountains, Japantown, 1975-1976, 1999
Art Is… ASAWA (2006-2007)
Arts Curriculum & Student Artwork
“How does Ruth Asawa transform the ordinary in her life’s work?”
“Art Is Asawa,” was a 2006 school-wide art study for public school students from kindergarten through eighth grade at Rooftop Alternative School in San Francisco. Field trips to the de Young Museum introduced students to Asawa’s sculptures, inspiring the creation of new works across five arts disciplines (visual arts, theatre, music, dance and the literary arts) as outlined in a ground-breaking document.
SFUSD Arts Education Master Plan
Artist Ruth Asawa believed that art is an important part of everyday life. An advocate for arts education in the public schools, she was a champion for all of the children of San Francisco. Ruth states, “Just as athletes need to exercise every day, children need to make art every day.”
2026 also marks the 20th anniversary of the SFUSD Arts Education Master Plan (AEMP), a document which carried forward Asawa’s bold vision for arts education: “Every school, every student, every day.”