In honour of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Google is celebrating the life of sculptor Ruth Asawa with a Google Doodle today.
Ruth Asawa was an American-Japanese artist who spent time living in a Japanese-American internment camp in the Second World War .
She made a name for herself in the 1950s, and was famous for creating unique wire sculptures of abstract forms.
Here's everything you need to know about Ruth Asawa:
Who was Ruth Asawa?
Ruth Asawa was born in California in 1926. She had six brothers and sisters, and her parents, who were immigrants from Japan , operated a farm.
Ruth showed artistic talent from a young age, and at the age of just 13 she won a prize for a piece of work depicting what makes someone American.
During the Second World War Ruth and her family were interned in a detention camp for Japanese-Americans. Ruth attended high school in the camp, and wanted to become a teacher when she graduated.
While Ruth did go on to attend Milwaukee State Teachers College, she ended up leaving before she could get her degree. Prejudice against Japanese-Americans was still rife, and Ruth was unable to get the teaching practice she needed to graduate.
Instead, Asawa pursued her interest in art. She studied at Black Mountain College, and began to make a name for herself by creating sculptures with wire.
Ruth designed the Japanese-American Internment Memorial Sculpture in San Francisco, and she created a mermaid fountain in Ghirardelli Square.
Fifteen of her sculptures are on permanent display in San Francisco's de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, and you can also see her work in the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York.
While she never became an art teacher, Asawa was a passionate educator and believed that art education was an empowering experience for children.
In 2010 the San Francisco School of the Arts was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in her honour.
Ruth Asawa died in 2013 at the age of 87.