Download or read book The Wonderful Towers of Watts written by Patricia Zelver and published by Boyds Mills Press. This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible artwork of an Italian immigrant who followed his dream of monumental proportions in the impoverished Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles is revealed in this fascinating and engaging true story. A Reading Rainbow selection! Simon (Sam) Rodia had no formal engineering or architectural training. Yet, over the course of three decades, he constructed an artistic masterpiece in his own backyard – the Watts Towers. Using all kinds of things other people had thrown away, such as broken bottles and tiles, pieces of mirror and glass, seashells, and bits of pottery, he adorned the collection of 17 interconnected sculptural towers. His imaginative salvaging and perseverance can be seen today, as people from all over the world still come to marvel at Sam’s dream.
Download or read book The Los Angeles Watts Towers written by Bud Goldstone and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 1997 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Watts Towers of Simon Rodia are one of the unique treasures of Los Angeles and the product of one man's obsession. Rodia, a poor Italian immigrant, settled in a sleepy railway junction south of downtown in 1921 and spent the next thirty-four years single-handedly assembling a frenzy of shapes and color. Rising to one hundred feet, the towers were built without machine equipment, scaffolding, bolts, rivets, welds - or plans!" "Bud Goldstone, who knew Rodia personally, and Arloa Paquin Goldstone have worked to preserve the towers since 1959. They tell the exciting story of how the towers were first rescued from demolition by the City of Los Angeles itself and then saved from natural and man-made disasters. They present new biographical information about Rodia and his innovative techniques and discuss the towers as art, as architecture, and as a singular expression of urban culture in Southern California."--Page 4 of cover.
Download or read book Dream Something Big written by Dianna Hutts Aston and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-08-18 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1921 and 1955, Italian immigrant Simon Rodia transformed broken glass, seashells, pottery, and a dream to "do something big" into a U.S. National Landmark. Readers watch the towers rise from his little plot of land in Watts, California, through the eyes of a fictional girl as she grows and raises her own children. Chronicled in stunningly detailed collage that mimics Rodia's found-object art, this thirty-four-year journey becomes a mesmerizing testament to perseverance and possibility. A final, innovative "build-your-own-tower" activity makes this multicultural, intergenerational tribute a classroom natural and a perfect gift-sure to encourage kids to follow their own big dreams.
Download or read book Sabato Rodia s Towers in Watts written by Luisa Del Giudice and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2014-06-15 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A rich array of perspectives on the creative work of the eccentric immigrant laborer who created one of the most mysterious landmarks of Los Angeles.” —Donna Gabaccia, Professor of History, University of Minnesota The Watts Towers, wondrous objects of art and architecture, were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia, an Italian immigrant laborer who wanted to do “something big.” 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, Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts revisits the man and his towers. In 1919, 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 rebuilt. 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. Most of the contributions originated at two interdisciplinary conferences held in Los Angeles and in Italy, and the collection as a whole is a well-rounded tribute to one man’s tenacious labor of love. A portion of royalties will go to support the work of the Watts Towers Arts Center.
Download or read book Blindsight written by Peter Watts and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Lady Hahn and Her Seven Friends written by Yumi Heo and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A seamstress banishes her tools from her sewing box when she hears them boasting, but she discovers that she cannot do her work without them. Based on a Korean classical essay written in the late 1800s.
Download or read book Iconic L A written by Gloria Koenig and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Los Angeles is a city whose buildings define it, a city whose buildings are instantly recognizable. A bestseller in hardcover, Iconic L.A. has been completely updated and revised to include Case Study House #8, the famed steel-and- glass masterpiece designed by Charles and Ray Eames"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds written by Leslie Umberger and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2007-10-04 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The need to personalize our surroundings is a defining human characteristic. For some this need becomes a compulsion to transform their personal surroundings into works of art. The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, has undertaken the mission to preserve these environments, which are presented for the first time in Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds. This colorful and inspiring book features the work of twenty-two vernacular artists whose locales, personal histories, and reasons for art-making vary widely but who all share a powerful connection to the home as art. Featured projects range from art environments that remain intact, such as Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in California, tosites lost over the years such as Emery Blagdon's six hundred elaborate "Healing Machines," made of copper, aluminum, tinfoil, magnets, ribbons, farm-machinery parts, painted light bulbs, beads, coffee-can lids, and more. Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds is the first book to explore these spectacularly offbeat spaces in detail.From "Original Rhinestone Cowboy" Loy Bowlin's wall-to-wall glitter-and-foil living room to the concrete bestiary of "witch of Fox Point" Mary Nohl, each artist and project is described in detail through a wealth of visuals and text. Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds reminds us that our decorative choices tell the world not just what we like but who we are.
Download or read book Los Angeles Is written by Elisa Parhad and published by Cameron. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stylish board book primer featuring the sights and delights of Los Angeles in simple rhyme and gorgeous illustrations. Full color.
Download or read book Outside Inside written by LeUyen Pham and published by Roaring Brook Press. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Caldecott honoree LeUyen Pham, Outside, Inside is a moving picture book that captures the unforgettable moment during the pandemic when people all over the world came together. It celebrates the essential workers, frontline workers, and communities that worked with each other to protect our loved ones. Something strange happened on an unremarkable day just before the season changed. Everybody who was outside . . . . . . went inside. Outside, it was quieter, wilder, and different. Inside, we laughed, we cried, and we grew. We remembered to protect the ones we love and love the ones who protect us. While the world changed outside, we became stronger on the inside and believed that someday soon spring would come again. A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book of 2021 Evanston Public Library 101 Great Books for Kids List of 2021 A Shelf Awareness Best Children's Book of 2021 A 2022 Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts List
Download or read book Hannah and the Ramadan Gift written by Qasim Rashid and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debut picture book by author and human rights activist Qasim Rashid that celebrates good deeds during the month of Ramadan. It's the first day of Ramadan and Hannah wants to be a part of this important month every way she can. But if she's too young to fast, how can she observe Ramadan? By saving the world, Dada Jaan tells her. And so Hannah learns that by helping her friends and neighbors and by showing kindness and generosity, she can make the world a better place. The debut picture book by human rights activist and attorney Qasim Rashid tells a timely story full of warmth and heart about the observance of Ramadan and the power of good deeds.
Download or read book The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art written by Joan M. Marter and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011 with total page 3140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.
Download or read book The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place written by E.L. Konigsburg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited new novel by the two-time Newbery Medalist stars Margaret Rose Kane, Connor Kane's older half-sister in "Silent to the Bone," who tells the story of the summer she was 12 years old.
Download or read book The Piggy in the Puddle written by Charlotte Pomerantz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A determined little piggy absolutely refuses to leave her mud puddle in this rollicking Classic Board Book by Charlotte Pomerantz and James Marshall! See the piggy, See the puddle, See the muddy little puddle. Charlotte Pomerantz’s tongue-twisting nonsense verse—made even more exuberantly hilarious by George and Martha creator, James Marshall’s illustrations—is sure to delight both children and parents alike!
Download or read book Silent Days Silent Dreams written by Allen Say and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caldecott Medal winner Allen Say brings his lavish illustrations and hybrid narrative and artistic styles to the story of artist James Castle. James Castle was born two months premature on September 25, 1899, on a farm in Garden Valley, Idaho. He was deaf, mute, autistic, and probably dyslexic. He didn't walk until he was four; he would never learn to speak, write, read, or use sign language.Yet, today Castle's artwork hangs in major museums throughout the world. The Philadelphia Museum of Art opened "James Castle: A Retrospective" in 2008. The 2013 Venice Biennale included eleven works by Castle in the feature exhibition "The Encyclopedic Palace." And his reputation continues to grow.Caldecott Medal winner Allen Say, author of the acclaimed memoir Drawing from Memory, takes readers through an imagined look at Castle's childhood, allows them to experience his emergence as an artist despite the overwhelming difficulties he faced, and ultimately reveals the triumphs that he would go on toachieve.
Download or read book The Sister from Below written by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky and published by Fisher King Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is She, this Sister from Below? She's certainly not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you'll allow, She'll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goose chase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She's a siren, a seductress, a shapeshifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life the evolution of Soul.
Download or read book Bottle Houses written by Melissa Eskridge Slaymaker and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the world of folk artist Grandma Prisbrey.
