Description: the watts Towers Arts Center - The watts Towers by Sam Rodia - non-official site - watts, Los Angeles, California United States of America.
california (99) los angeles (48) cement (7) ceramic (4) towers (2) arts center (1) watts towers (1) watts (1) simon rodia (1) sam rodia (1)
"If a man who has not labeled himself an artist happens to produce a work of art, he is likely to cause a lot of confusion and inconvenience." (Calvin Trillin in the New Yorker in 1965). Sam Rodia an Italian immigrant who, the correspondent from NYC explained, "constructed a dream-like complex of openwork towers . . . and encrusted them with a sparkling mosaic, composed mainly of what had once been refuse." spent most of his lifetime building his world which he called Nuestro Pueblo, or "our town."
So the original name of the towers is "Nuestro Pueblo", as Sam Rodia named his project. They became known as "The Watts Towers of Simon Rodia". Because of the way the name Rodia is pronounced in Italian, his neighbors wrote his name as “Rodilla” , following the Hispanic American pronunciation . That is why the narrators in older documentary films pronounce the double "ll" in Rodilla like in "professionally", as they heard in interviews with Simon Rodia's neighbors.
After visiting the Watts Towers for the first time in my life with my old friend Donna, who also is a webmaster, we decided to donate this site to the people who preserve and guard this great site specific sculpture by Sam Rodia. we asked the information desk people if there was an official site of the Watts Towers. There was not; so we asked if they would mind if we made a site for them for nothing; they had no objection - to the contrary. Donna registered wattstowers dot us and I build the site. So here i