aaahhhh….another day in paradise. the sky was bright blue, the air was warm. this morning i took U. (Umberto) to Watts Towers. this is an amazing and extraordinary piece of folk art created in the Watts section of LA, the place where the infamous riots took place in the 60’s. nobody touched the Watts Towers when the riots happened, by the way.
they were built by this little (five feet tall) man named Simon Rodia. he started the towers when he was in his 40’s, worked on them dilligently until he was in his 70’s, and then gave the property to a neighbor and moved away, never to see them again. the thing is amazing and really impossible to describe. plus i have no time for that now because i’m about to go see a show. but here are a few photos of the place. he did it all without scaffolding, without power tools, without welding stuff to connect the underlying iron bars. he embedded thousands of pieces of found glass and pottery into the cement covering the structures, and made all kinds of designs in the cement.
like i said, no time now, more later:
ok then,
grace in a rush on wednesday.