Ruth Asawa

Ruth Asawa one of seven children born to Japanese American fruit farmers in depression era California. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, her father was arrested by the FBI and didn't return for six years. Her mother and siblings were sent to live in converted horse stables at the Santa Anita Racetrack. She spent her time there learning to draw and paint from interned Japanese artists. Her college refused to grant her a teaching certificate because she was Japanese, so she entered Black Mountain College, where she studied under Josef Albers and met her future husband Albert Lanier. She traveled to Mexico to study art, became fascinated with basket weaving, and developed an experimental practice with wire sculpture while also raising six children. Later in her life she earned honorary degrees from several art institutions and turned her attention toward public engagement. Ruth Asawa died in San Francisco in August of 2013. www.ruthasawa.com

Shiro Kuramata

Kuramata (1934-1191) applied traditional Japanese aesthetics with innovative materiality in 1970's and 80's Japan. He created a sense of floating and transparency, using industrial materials, acrylic, steel mesh, aluminum, and glass. His designs seem to break free from gravity, and are similarly boundless in terms of identity, by merging categories such as Japanese or Western, minimalist or postmodern. Kuramata's obsession with ephemerality is evident in his furniture (see photos below), as is his fascination with western culture and the postmodern experimental playfulness of Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis group.  http://www.shirokuramata.com/

Nathalie du Pasquier

Nathalie du Pasquier is a prolific French designer who moved to Milan in 1979 and was a founding member of the Memphis Group. She designed patterns for textiles, rugs, wallpaper and furniture laminates for Memphis until 1987, when she turned her focus to painting. She recently launched a collaboration with Christophe Lemaire for his S/S 2013 collection.

See her work and archive: nathaliedupasquier.com

Patterns from 1984

Paintings, 2012

NduP for Christophe Lemaire

Manfred Mohr

Manfred Mohr's early drawings from 1969, rendered on one of the first available plotters, which was used at the time for tracing meteorologic patterns. Mohr wrote an algorithm to generate random permutations of alternating horizontal and vertical lines within a set space.

Mohr's work and archive: www.emohr.com