Licensing

Plating

Narrator: Aiko Cuneo, Ruth Asawa's daughter

Transcription

Ruth would take her sculptures to be cleaned, or have them dipped in these tanks to change the color of the wire, to plate them… it was called a plating company. There were also these electro-plating tanks there, and she saw one of the men taking a big car bumper out of one of these electro-plating tanks. She said, “What are you doing there?” And the man said, “We’re putting the car bumper into the electro-plating tank, and what it does is it coats. It plates the bumper and makes it smooth. It takes the bumps away and it smoothes it out.” She said, “What would happen if you reversed the current of the electricity? Could you make my tied wire sculpture grow the ends of the wire?” And, they tried it, and it worked. So, that’s how she started doing electro-plated sculptures. Unfortunately, the electro-plated sculptures were very brittle, so she didn’t make that many of them, because they were way too fragile to travel or to handle.