nothing new under the sun…

…apparently not. work by tuan tran?

i was going to use this post to write about san francisco based artist tuan tran but then i happened to browse through the copy of california design 1930-1965 that i picked up at the lacma exhibit a month or two ago.  what i came across was this piece by ruth asawa who is an artist also based in san francisco:

photo by laurence cuneo

when i read tuan tran’s bio, i didn’t see any mention of ruth who has been creating her wire sculptures since at least 1955.  being that she too is san francisco based with a prolific amount of public art, i would be skeptical of tran’s having never heard of her.  it’s one thing to be inspired by someone’s work but quite another to simply copy it outright especially when it’s a part of the fine arts museum of san francisco…