Aurora (Asawa)

You are standing before Aurora, a stainless steel fountain and sculpture created by the artist Ruth Asawa. Completed in 1986, the piece consists of a thirteen-foot-wide ring built from 120 individual, welded stainless steel triangles. The design finds its origin in the simple, repetitive art of origami. Asawa, who learned paper folding as a child, often used this practice as a core part of her creative process, exploring how flat, two-dimensional surfaces could be manipulated to convey complex three-dimensional forms. Her husband, the architect Albert Lanier, played a vital role in the sculpture's realization by calculating the precise structural dimensions and angles required to translate her delicate paper folds into rigid, industrial metal. Asawa named the piece for the Roman goddess of the dawn. On bright mornings, the rising sun hits the facets of these steel triangles, creating a shifting display of light and shadow across the sculpture. The location was intentionally chosen to frame the San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge, offering a perspective where the city's natural backdrop serves as a changing canvas behind the fixed geometric frame of the art.