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Orange County Register
September, 2001
In 1921 an Italian tile setter named Simon Rodia made what is possibly the art world’s greatest understatement when he said he wanted to “build something big” next to the home he had built on a wedge-shaped lot in a burgeoning Los Angeles neighborhood. Shortly afterwards a collection of massive towers began growing out of his side yard.
Rodia labored slowly and alone on his project in his spare night and weekend hours, his silhouette rising each evening against the sky as he built his creations ever higher. He worked with no particular plan and no special equipment. His most sophisticated tool was a window washer’s belt. Thirty-three years later, at the age of 76, Rodia lowered himself nearly 100 feet from the last tower and walked away from a magnum opus he called, “Nuestro Pueblo,” or “Our Home.”
Today, 80 years after he began working on it, I am zooming down the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles with my boyfriend to see Rodia’s “Nuestro Pueblo.” Known today as the “ Watts Towers ,” the masterpiece is a complex arrangement of fantastic open work steel and concrete spires inlaid with over 20,000 pieces of shining broken glass, china dishes and ceramic tile.
While the towers are a National Historic Monument , and slated for a grand reopening at the end of September, my boyfriend is not enthused about going to see them. Mammoth works of folk art are not his thing, especially when they are set in the heart of Watts , a community known more for arson than for art. When we turn off the freeway however, we find a peaceful neighborhood, where the only people we see are women and children shopping, and small groups chatting on street corners. Not one of them is even remotely interested in us, the two out-of-towners cruising by.
We almost miss the street signs indicating the way to the Towers and when we see them for the first time from blocks away, they look disappointingly like radio masts. As we draw closer however, their conical shapes remind us of Gaudi’s Barcelona Cathedral spires. By the time we pull up in front on a quiet, cul-de-sac block lined with tidy bungalows, our view has turned into a surreal jumble of colorful twisted forms and arches that ultimately sort themselves out into distinct architectural elements: among them are soaring chimney and gazebo, three birdbaths, a baptismal font and a suspended ladder of hearts set against the LA sky.
As we stared silently through the metal grate of the locked iron fence that surrounded them, I thought about how lucky we were to still have them with us. Rodia himself was astonishingly indifferent to the masterpiece that he spent 34 years creating. Once it was completed, he moved away north to Martinez never saw it again. Not even in late ’59, when the forces of urban renewal earmarked the towers for demolition, did he return to visit them. “Just tell them,” he said, when hearing that the city had deemed the Towers worthy of a junkyard, “to do what they please.” Fortunately Rodia’s complacency did not extend to the “Friends of Rodia’s Towers Committee” which rallied to save the Watts Towers through a series of seismic tests that proved them structurally sound.
By now my boyfriend has been sucked in by the mythic power of Rodia’s vision. As a skilled amateur photographer, he is also kicking himself for not having his camera. Later, artist, and Towers aficionado Edward Landler, who is making a documentary about Rodia and his creation, explained the Towers photographic appeal to me. “There’s a balance and harmony as the elements create a unified piece,” he said. “It’s impossible to take a bad picture of them.”
While my boyfriend takes in the balance and harmony, I take a stroll to the Watts Cultural Center next door. Walking through the amphitheater and park behind the Towers, I see a father and son play catch with a football on the park’s grassy slope. Absorbed in their play, they are oblivious to the tangle of spires looming above their heads.
The Cultural Arts Center is in a tired old building painted the color of mud, so I’m surprised to find a well-designed gallery with skylights and maple floors inside exhibiting works by local artists. In a studio next door, a group of teenagers are hard at work with sound equipment, mixing hip-hop music.
By the time I get back to my boyfriend, he has done a careful perambulation of the Towers, and inspected them from every possible angle. His trepidation about our visit has vanished and he chatters away about plans to return at the end of September, when we can get beyond the fence and move through the Towers’ maze at will. We will be sure to bring our cameras.
After spending most of the past twenty years covered in scaffolding and undergoing repairs and renovations, The Watts Towers will be permanently reopened in time for the Watts Towers’ Day of the Drum and Jazz Festivals on September 29 and 30. A dramatic lighting ceremony is scheduled for the evening of September 29. The festivals are free to all. For more information call the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department at 213-473-7700, or logon to www.culturela.org .
Cece Blase
Copyright 2001