Watts Towers: True inspiration for a junk collector

Although I've been to LA many times, until recently I had never made it to see the Watts Towers. When I finally did several months back, I was awestruck. The towers and the whole compound (17 interconnected structures) were built over a period of 33 years (1921-1954) by an Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia...in his spare time! As related to me by a tour guide, he suffered multiple losses, first his brother and then his daughter, became a reclusive alcoholic, was finally abandoned by his family. He reemerged after some years, bought a lot in Watts, and began to build (singlehandedly!) this amazing place.

He used scrap steel pipes, which he bent to shape by using the nearby railroad tracks as a vise. He covered them with wire mesh and mortar into which he embedded broken glass bottles, cracked tile, broken dishes, seashells, you name it. He worked in a nearby pottery factory and brought home damaged pieces to add to his work, and the neighborhood kids contributed by bringing him junk they collected. The ladder-like structures on the outside of the towers allowed him to climb with all his materials and tools, and he just kept adding rungs as he built higher and higher. The tallest towers are over 99 feet.

When I came back, I showed pictures of the towers to some of the teens I work with. They were greatly inspired by both his life story and his work, and have begun to experiment with embedding found objects into their clay pieces.

For more info, photos, and videos: http://www.wattstowers.us/