Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts: Art, Migrations, Development
Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts: Art, Migrations, Development
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Abstract
The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia. Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally renowned destination, the Watts Towers in Los Angeles are both a personal artistic expression and a collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo—Our Town/Our People. Featuring fresh and innovative examinations, this book is a much-anticipated revisitation of the man and his towers. In 1919, Sabato Rodia purchased a triangular plot of land in a multiethnic, working-class, semi-rural district. He set to work on an unusual building project in his own yard. By night, Rodia dreamed and excogitated, and by day he built. He experimented with form, color, texture, cement mixtures, and construction techniques. He built, tore down, and re-built. As an artist completely possessed by his work, he was often derided as an incomprehensible crazy man. Providing a multifaceted, holistic understanding of Rodia, the towers, and the cultural/social/physical environment within which the towers and their maker can be understood, this book compiles essays from twenty authors, offering perspectives from the arts, the communities involved in the preservation and interpretation of the towers, and the academy. The Watts Towers are wondrous objects of art and architecture as well as the expression and embodiment of the resolve of a singular artistic genius to do something great. But they also recount the heroic civic efforts (art and social action) to save them, both of which continue to this day to evoke awe and inspiration.
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Front Matter
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Introduction:
Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts and the Search for Common Ground
Luisa Del Giudice
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Part 1 Situating Sabato Rodia and the Watts Towers: Art Movements, Cultural Contexts, and Migrations
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Local Art, Global Issues: Tales of Survival and Demise Among Contemporary Art Environments
Jo Farb Hernández
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Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: Structure and Performance in Rodia’s Watts Towers
Guglielmo Bilancioni
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Sam Rodia’s Watts Towers in Six Sections in Succession
Paul A. Harris
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Without Precedent: The Watts Towers
Thomas Harrison
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An Era of Grand Ambitions: Sam Rodia and California Modernism
Richard Cándida Smith
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A California Detour on the Road to Italy: The Hubcap Ranch, the Napa Valley, and Italian American Identity
Laura E. Ruberto
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The Gigli of Nola During Rodia’s Times
Felice Ceparano
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The Literary and Immigrant Contexts of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers
Kenneth Scambray
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Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts: Art, Migration, and Italian Imaginaries
Luisa Del Giudice
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“Why a Man Makes the Shoes?”: Italian American Art and Philosophy in Sabato Rodia’s Watts Towers
Joseph Sciorra
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Parallel Expressions: Artistic Contributions of Italian Immigrants in the Río de la Plata Basin of South America at the Time of Simon Rodia
George Epolito
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Local Art, Global Issues: Tales of Survival and Demise Among Contemporary Art Environments
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Part 2 The Watts Towers Contested: Conservation, Guardianship, and Cultural Heritage
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Fifty Years of Guardianship: The Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts (CSRTW)
Jeanne S. Morgan
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A Custody Case: Ownership of Rodia’s Towers
Jeffrey Herr
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Nuestro Pueblo: The Spatial and Cultural Politics of Los Angeles’s Watts Towers
Sarah Schrank
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Reading the Watts Towers, Teaching Los Angeles: Storytelling and Public Art
Monica Barra
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Spires and Towers Between Tangible, Intangible, and Contested Transnational Cultural Heritage
Katia Ballacchino
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Fifty Years of Guardianship: The Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts (CSRTW)
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Part 3 The Watts Towers and Community Development
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Artists in Conversation
R. Judson Powell and others
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Building Community Through Self-Awareness and Self-Expression
Gail Brown
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Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers: Sociopolitical Realities, Economic Underdevelopment, and Renaissance: Yesterday and Today
Shirmel Hayden
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Afterword:
Personal Reflections on the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative
Luisa Del Giudice
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Artists in Conversation
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End Matter
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