The Watts Towers, considered “the finest example of a folk environment in the world as well as the largest single artwork ever created by one person,” (Moran, Sceurman 2004) is for me, a place of both fantastical beauty and intrigue and a demonstration of how creative endeavors can supersede personal traumas.
Perhaps because I have the back story of knowing that Italian immigrant Simon (Sabato) Rodia was once an alcoholic, that his wife left him, his daughter died, he had two estranged sons, and he scarcely spoke English, I see this place that he worked on after he quit drinking was his way of navigating through this difficult world. It was his way of finding a light at the end of the tunnel, or perhaps even creating his own palatial environment in a strange and foreign land.
Rodia named his creation, which he started building when he was 42, “Nuestro Pueblo,” which translates to “Our Town.” On a triangle lot, at the end of a dead end street, Rodia set out to build something big, without the help of anyone else, and not even using the aid of scaffolding. He continued to work on this one work in his free time for the next 33 years. Undoubtedly inspired by his native Italy, the construction worker/tile maker created an entire, interconnecting world of steel towering structures and arched flying buttresses serving as supports. He infused his steel armatures and mortared chicken wire with a plethora of found objects, including broken tile chards from his day-job, porcelain objects, figurines, plates, bottles, sea shells, and other scrap materials. He built without any direction, adding one layer after another, like a giant mosaic with arms and legs.
Walking through the space, you suddenly feel like you are at an antique store, seeing pieces of old salt and pepper shakers, old soda bottles, milk glass, broken tiles, as well as recognizable chards of plates and cups. It serves as a type of graveyard for these everyday objects, and the time period from which they were created, just as much as these objects collaboratively make a new object–a structure whose creation myth is deeply embedded within its crevices.
The Watts Towers were a labor of love for Rodia. And to me they seem very romantic. There are numerable heart shapes throughout the space — in fact it seems like a theme. I read that weddings often took place there. I think it is significant that he did not make many things. In fact, there are only a few things that have been attributed to him, but none are on par with the Towers in Watts. This one location confirms his monogamous relationship with and his insatiable love for this project.
Today, the Watts Towers are used as a regenerative anchor for the city (which at one point called the towers a pile of junk, but then a group of concerned citizens joined forces to preserve the site as a cultural landmark), which has given special promotion to area galleries and museums that surround the towers in an effort to gentrify the city. But the City still has a long way to go.
One thing I was struck by (and I can’t deny) on my most recent visit to The Watts Towers, was not the Towers themselves, as I have been there before (and somehow have forgotten the drive to and from the Towers). But this time, I was struck by the quality of life in the city of Watts, verses, well, everywhere else, but also the contrast between the City and the Towers. I guess the Towers function like a diamond in the rough for the city which was not in its current condition when Rodia was mortaring these towers, from 1921 to 1954. In fact, it was a quaint suburban village, where people had chickens and cows, and folks once left their front doors unlocked.
Now, Watts is one giant wrought iron, pitch-forked gated fence. Not a single window is left un-barred, not a single shopping center is left un-gated. The community has the lowest median household income in all of greater Los Angeles. One wonders whether these Robocop-esqe bars and gates are over-reactive or dramatic, but either way, they carry a psychological weight to them that no doubt influences each and every one of the City’s citizens whether they are the enemy or not.
After the dizzying appreciation of the colorful towers fades with each camera stop-light and fiercely gated shopping center, one can not help inhale the contagious fear that Watt’s residents might feel just to go outside to water their lawn, or have their kids walk to school. I know the fear comes from somewhere, is rooted in physical things like crime and violence. But is the reaction of the city to become more like a jail going to stop or even deter the violence? Do these bars and gates carry a symbolic double entendre as both artificial safety for the resident and as fuel for the very divisiveness these various gangsters and crimesters thrive on?
I mull over Rodia, and how he took his pain or dissatisfaction with this bi-polar society, and channeled it into making something, even one thing, and how hopefully that action can speak to the city’s people as an alternative way to deal with the shitty hand that one’s been dealt.
