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Over the last dozen years, Asawa has accomplished many sculpture commissions, several of which have received notable local and national acclaim. Her flamboyant bronze fountain sculpture at Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco, for which she life-cast a friend for mermaid figures and wire crocheted the tails, is one of the city's most beloved artistic landmarks. Her already famous fountain for the new Hyatt House on Union Square, San Francisco, is a composite work by many hands. More than 250 people, ranging in age from 3 to 90, were invited by Asawa to make individual dough additions to her ever expanding panorama of the city. When it was completed, the 41 panel bas-relief was cast in bronze and left unsigned by Asawa in honor of her many helpers.
Since her appointment by Mayor Joseph L. Alioto to the Art Commission of the city of San Francisco, Asawa has served as a "soft voiced but outspoken exponent of quality" for the past five years. She views her work as Art Commissioner as a means to bring art to more people particularly to young people in the city's public schools. Beginning at Alvarado School and moving to other city elementary and high schools she has engineered a unique program with parents, teachers and children all working together to beautify the schools through art and gardening projects. In the 1972-73 school-year, the Board of Education granted $30,000 to the project for seven schools.
"Asawa is an artist and she does not want to become an educator," writes Gerald Nordland in the catalog essay. "She is concerned with completing the circle -- having learned something, then applied it, to pass it on in some form so that it is not forgotten."

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