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Watts Towers
by Andrew Hume
Looking at art makes me want to be in love…Take pornography for example! No, I’m kidding about that.
But enjoying art–outdoor art especially–makes me feel like vacation. I guess I could say it’s “a vacation for the mind” if I wanted to be a dickhead about it. And a vacation is the ultimate occasion for romance. You’re both (presumably) experiencing these things for the first time, allowing your gentle love to blossom through your shared attempt to understand the significance of this art/vacation. You won’t just be thinking about fucking anymore because you’ll be deeply entranced in “soul echoes”. You’ll want only to burn in the eternity of some magical white volcano in Outer Space. Where the eruptions shoot, not lava, but golden Sapphic showers of vocal beauty, “Ahhhhhhhhh”.
And you think to yourself, Holy fuck. Look at those lips…Plump with the blood that my presence quickens. Plump enough to hold my steps when I falter, yet abundantly tender when they wake me from the gloom of midnight whimpers. These, the lips that express only tenderness and laughter. The lips that would halt warring with a single, silent smirk…And then there’s b.j.’s…Then you say, “Holy shit I love you! Let’s go do crafts! Let’s roll about in the soft, pregnant wheat fields of some jubilant Thursday with a battalion of warm puppies. Let’s hop around, mad like two spry colts, until we collapse in a tangle of sweated limbs and fuck forever!”
Nuestro Pueblo (or Watts Towers) is the work of Sabado (Sam) Rodia. It’s one of those pieces of art that’s called “a labor of love” because the structure, originally built around his house, took him almost thirty years to complete. His actual home burned down shortly after the completion in 1954, but the towers and surrounding sculptures still remain.
Nuestro Pueblo appears to be a bit too casually created at first–deficient, even. But then it becomes apparent that the structural draw lies in that very imperfection. It was created directly from Mr Rodia’s hands and mind as he went along, with no blueprint or any kind of outline whatsoever. Its beauty is in its organic, unrefined nature. The building’s direction, very literally, could have gone anywhere.
One can’t help but notice the Towers’ irresistible (and frequently referenced) similarities to the work of Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. The smoothly rolling, hand-sculpted concrete, like Mr Gaudi’s work on the Barcelona cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, makes up most of the structure. Then there’re the pieces of glass and bits of ceramic hardened into concrete–Mr Gaudi did that type of shit, too. However, when pressed for comment on a photo of La Sagrada Familia, Mr Rodia said only, “Did this man have help?” Booyeah! In your face Gaudi!
Sure, Antoni Gaudi may have lived inside his unfinished cathedral for over a decade, sleeping only minutes at a time, and is said to have died as a result of the pain his work caused him. But the dude certainly had some helping hands. Furthermore, like a total pussy, he drew out plans first. And his shit’s still not done! It’s been over a hundred years! It only took Sam thirty!
Sabado Rodia and his brothers came to the US from Italy in the 1880’s. All three of them worked the coalmines of Pennsylvania, until Sabado (now Sam) moved to Seattle and then Oakland, where he worked as a cement mason. He and his wife, Lucy, had three children (two sons and a daughter, the latter died at a young age). Unfortunately, family life soon drove Sam nuts, and he began to drink like a reverse fireman. His wife left him in 1909 and took the kids with her. She would later refer to her former husband only as, “the drunken bum”.
At this point, Sam was a certifiable roisterer. He disappeared for nearly a decade and is presumed to have been assholing around Southern California and into Mexico. He resurfaced in Long Beach, with a new lady called Benita, in 1918, as a newly sober and hard-working sumbitch with a vision. Sadly, he wasn’t able to get down to business, art-wise, until he gave up on women. After Benita left him, he lived with a Carmen for awhile. But according to neighborhood gossip, she loaded up the duffles and jumped rail. This was around 1921, when he first purchased his bit of property in Watts.
It’s speculated that Mr Rodia didn’t begin building Neustro Pueblo until sometime between 1924 and 1927. Still working full days as a mason, he would come home and work late hours and weekends on the structure. He didn’t really do much else. He’d bathe with alcohol swabbings about once a month (thinking water baths to be dangerous), but neglected all the cement and glass pieces that had become caked to his arms (he was a bit of an eccentric, apparently).
Some claim that Mr Rodia built his towers in an attempt to raise his spirit from its daily disorder. Others speculate that he was working a self-imposed sort of penance for his butthole years. It’s certain, however, that he didn’t really give a shit about what happened to his life’s work after he’d completed it. He gave the Towers and his land to a neighbor in 1954. Shortly thereafter, a reporter for the LA Times asked Mr Rodia what he thought should be done with Nuestro Pueblo. He replied only, “Just tell them to do whatever they please.” Booyeah again! Dude was badass!
P.S. As my final statement as an art critic, I’d like to say that I hope fucking Christo melts under a giant magnifying glass or drowns in an enormous lake of shampoo. Am I right? He’s always going, “Look at me! Look at me! Watch what I can do guys!” He’s a piece of shit.
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Volume 2, Issue 3 contents |
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