Download or read book Sabato Rodia s Towers in Watts written by Luisa Del Giudice and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-15 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia, a highly remarkable 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 that mine deeper and broader than ever before, Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts is a much anticipated revisitation of the man and his towers. In 1919, Sabato 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 re-built. 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, Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts 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: “Art & Migration: Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts, Los Angeles” and “The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art, Migrations, Development.” The Watts Towers are wondrous objects of art and architecture as well as the expression and embodiment of the resolve of a singular artistic genius to do something great. But they also recount the heroic civic efforts (art and social action) to save them, both of which continue to this day to evoke awe and inspiration. Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts presents a well-rounded tribute to one man’s tenacious labor of love. A portion of royalties from this book will go to support the work of the Watts Towers Arts Center.

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 Preservation of Watts Towers 1921 2021 written by Mark Gilberg and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2023-09-14 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1921, an Italian immigrant named Sabato Rodia purchased a property in Watts, California, and started building a series of sculptures and decorative features in his backyard, including three open, pyramidal-shaped towers – two of which are nearly 100 feet tall. Though Rodia referred to his creation as Nuestro Pueblo (Our Town), today, it is known collectively as the Watts Towers. Constructed over 35 years, Watts Towers remains a marvel of structural engineering and architecture and is widely recognized as one of the finest examples of “outsider art” or “land-based” art in the United States. Rodia abandoned his property in 1954 never to return. Over the years Watts Towers has experienced a long history of vandalism and neglect punctuated by major conservation campaigns and interventions. This book describes in great detail the history of these preservation efforts with a view to collecting and synthesizing all available information into one coherent study.

Download or read book Curatorial Conversations written by Olivia Cadaval and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its origins in 1967, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival has gained worldwide recognition as a model for the research and public presentation of living cultural heritage and the advocacy of cultural democracy. Festival curators play a major role in interpreting the Festival's principles and shaping its practices. Curatorial Conversations brings together for the first time in one volume the combined expertise of the Festival's curatorial staff—past and present—in examining the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s representation practices and their critical implications for issues of intangible cultural heritage policy, competing globalisms, cultural tourism, sustainable development and environment, and cultural pluralism and identity. In the volume, edited by the staff curators Olivia Cadaval, Sojin Kim, and Diana Baird N’Diaye, contributors examine how Festival principles, philosophical underpinnings, and claims have evolved, and address broader debates on cultural representation from their own experience. This book represents the first concerted project by Smithsonian staff curators to examine systematically the Festival’s institutional values as they have evolved over time and to address broader debates on cultural representation based on their own experiences at the Festival.

Download or read book Art and the City written by Sarah Schrank and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Art and the City" explores the contentious relationship between civic politics and visual culture in Los Angeles. Struggles between civic leaders and modernist artists to define civic identity and control public space highlight the significance of the arts as a site of political contest in the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Italian American Table written by Simone Cinotto and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best Food Book of 2014 by The Atlantic Looking at the historic Italian American community of East Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, Simone Cinotto recreates the bustling world of Italian life in New York City and demonstrates how food was at the center of the lives of immigrants and their children. From generational conflicts resolved around the family table to a vibrant food-based economy of ethnic producers, importers, and restaurateurs, food was essential to the creation of an Italian American identity. Italian American foods offered not only sustenance but also powerful narratives of community and difference, tradition and innovation as immigrants made their way through a city divided by class conflict, ethnic hostility, and racialized inequalities. Drawing on a vast array of resources including fascinating, rarely explored primary documents and fresh approaches in the study of consumer culture, Cinotto argues that Italian immigrants created a distinctive culture of food as a symbolic response to the needs of immigrant life, from the struggle for personal and group identity to the pursuit of social and economic power. Adding a transnational dimension to the study of Italian American foodways, Cinotto recasts Italian American food culture as an American "invention" resonant with traces of tradition.

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 Noah Purifoy written by Yael Lipschutz and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Published in conjunction with the exhibition Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California."

Download or read book Outsider Art written by Daniel Wojcik and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outsider art has exploded onto the international art scene, gaining widespread attention for its startling originality and visual power. As an expression of raw creativity, outsider art remains associated with self-taught visionaries, psychiatric patients, trance mediums, eccentric outcasts, and unschooled artistic geniuses who create things outside of mainstream artistic trends and styles. Outsider Art: Visionary Worlds and Trauma provides a comprehensive guide through the contested terrain of outsider art and the related domains of art brut, visionary art, “art of the insane,” and folk art. The book examines the history and primary issues of the field as well as explores the intersection between culture and individual creativity that is at the very heart of outsider art definitions and debates. Daniel Wojcik's interdisciplinary study challenges prevailing assumptions about the idiosyncratic status of outsider artists. This wide-ranging investigation of the art and lives of those labeled outsiders focuses on the ways that personal tragedies and suffering have inspired the art-making process. In some cases, trauma has triggered a creative transformation that has helped artists confront otherwise overwhelming life events. Additionally, Wojcik's study illustrates how vernacular traditions, religious worldviews, ethnic heritage, and popular culture have influenced such art. With its detailed consideration of personal motivations, cultural milieu, and the potentially therapeutic aspects of art making, this volume provides a deeper understanding of the artistic impulse and human creativity.

Download or read book Seventeen Television written by Justin Maurer and published by . This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Architects of Buddhist Leisure written by Justin Thomas McDaniel and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists have been produced both within and outside of monasteries across the region—in Nepal, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Justin McDaniel looks at the growth of Asia’s culture of Buddhist leisure—what he calls “socially disengaged Buddhism”—through a study of architects responsible for monuments, museums, amusement parks, and other sites. In conversation with noted theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, McDaniel argues that such sites highlight the importance of public, leisure, and spectacle culture from a Buddhist perspective and illustrate how “secular” and “religious,” “public” and “private,” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, places like Lek Wiriyaphan’s Sanctuary of Truth in Thailand, Suối Tiên Amusement Park in Saigon, and Shi Fa Zhao’s multilevel museum/ritual space/tea house in Singapore reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons and sectarian developments. They present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise: Together they form a gathering, not a movement. Despite the ingenuity of lay and ordained visionaries like Wiriyaphan and Zhao and their colleagues Kenzo Tange, Chan-soo Park, Tadao Ando, and others discussed in this book, creators of Buddhist leisure sites often face problems along the way. Parks and museums are complex adaptive systems that are changed and influenced by budgets, available materials, local and global economic conditions, and visitors. Architects must often compromise and settle at local optima, and no matter what they intend, their buildings will develop lives of their own. Provocative and theoretically innovative, Architects of Buddhist Leisure asks readers to question the very category of “religious” architecture. It challenges current methodological approaches in religious studies and speaks to a broad audience interested in modern art, architecture, religion, anthropology, and material culture.

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 41 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 Myself When I am Real written by Gene Santoro and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-29 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Mingus was one of the most innovative jazz musicians of the 20th Century, and ranks with Ives and Ellington as one of America's greatest composers. By temperament, he was a high-strung and sensitive romantic, a towering figure whose tempestuous personal life found powerfully coherent expression in the ever-shifting textures of his music. Now, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro strips away the myths shrouding "Jazz's Angry Man," revealing Mingus as more complex than even his lovers and close friends knew. A pioneering bassist and composer, Mingus redefined jazz's terrain. He penned over 300 works spanning gutbucket gospel, Colombian cumbias, orchestral tone poems, multimedia performance, and chamber jazz. By the time he was 35, his growing body of music won increasing attention as it unfolded into one pioneering musical venture after another, from classical-meets-jazz extended pieces to spoken-word and dramatic performances and television and movie soundtracks. Though critics and musicians debated his musical merits and his personality, by the late 1950s he was widely recognized as a major jazz star, a bellwether whose combined grasp of tradition and feel for change poured his inventive creativity into new musical outlets. But Mingus got headlines less for his art than for his volatile and often provocative behavior, which drew fans who wanted to watch his temper suddenly flare onstage. Impromptu outbursts and speeches formed an integral part of his long-running jazz workshop, modeled partly on dramatic models like Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Keeping up with the organized chaos of Mingus's art demanded gymnastic improvisational skills and openness from his musicians-which is why some of them called it "the Sweatshop." He hired and fired musicians on the bandstand, attacked a few musicians physically and many more verbally, twice threw Lionel Hampton's drummer off the stage, and routinely harangued chattering audiences, once chasing a table of inattentive patrons out of the FIVE SPOT with a meat cleaver. But the musical and mental challenges this volcanic man set his bands also nurtured deep loyalties. Key sidemen stayed with him for years and even decades. In this biography, Santoro probes the sore spots in Mingus's easily wounded nature that helped make him so explosive: his bullying father, his interracial background, his vulnerability to women and distrust of men, his views of political and social issues, his overwhelming need for love and acceptance. Of black, white, and Asian descent, Mingus made race a central issue in his life as well as a crucial aspect of his music, becoming an outspoken (and often misunderstood) critic of racial injustice. Santoro gives us a vivid portrait of Mingus's development, from the racially mixed Watts where he mingled with artists and writers as well as mobsters, union toughs, and pimps to the artistic ferment of postwar Greenwich Village, where he absorbed and extended the radical improvisation flowing through the work of Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, and Charlie Parker. Indeed, unlike Most jazz biographers, Santoro examines Mingus's extra-musical influences--from Orson Welles to Langston Hughes, Farwell Taylor, and Timothy Leary--and illuminates his achievement in the broader cultural context it demands. Written in a lively, novelistic style, Myself When I Am Real draws on dozens of new interviews and previously untapped letters and archival materials to explore the intricate connections between this extraordinary man and the extraordinary music he made.

Download or read book Nonconformers written by Lisa Slominski and published by . This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A global history of self-taught artists advocating for a nuanced understanding of modern and contemporary art often challenged by the establishment When the art world has paid attention to makers from outside the cultural establishment, including so-called outsider and self-taught artists, it has generally been within limiting categories. Yet these artists, including many women, people with disabilities, and people of color, have had a transformative influence on the history of modern art. Responding to growing interest in these artists, this book offers a nuanced history of their work and how it has been understood from the early twentieth century to the present day. Nonconformers includes work by well-known figures such as Henry Darger, Hilma af Klint, and Bill Traylor alongside many other artists who deserve widespread recognition. After reviewing how self-taught artists factored into key movements of twentieth-century art, the book shifts to highlighting the voices of contemporary practitioners through new interviews with artists William Scott, Mamadou Cissé, and George Widener. An international group of contributors addresses topics such as the development of the Black Folk Art movement in America and l'Art Brut in France, the creative process of self-taught artists working outside of traditional studios, and the themes of figuration, landscape, and abstraction. Global in scope and with chronological breadth, this alternative narrative is an essential introduction to the genre long known as "Outsider Art."

Download or read book The Routledge History of Italian Americans written by William Connell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 915 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation’s largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.

Download or read book Learning by Heart written by Corita Kent and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tap into your natural ability to create! Engaging, proven exercises for developing creativity Priceless resource for teachers, artists, actors, everyone Artist and educator Corita Kent inspired generations of artists, and the truth of her words "We can all talk, we can all write, and if the blocks are removed, we can all draw and paint and make things" still shines through. This revised edition of her classic work Learning by Heart features a new foreword and a chart of curriculum standards. Kent's original projects and exercises, developed through more than 30 years as an art teacher and richly illustrated with 300 thought-provoking images, are as inspiring and as freeing today as they were during her lifetime. Learn how to challenge fears, be open to new directions, recognize connections between objects and ideas, and much more in this remarkable, indispensable guide to freeing the creative spirit within all of us. With new material by art world heavyweights Susan Friel and Barbara Loste, Learning by Heart brings creative inspiration into the 21st century!

Download or read book Graphic Design and Architecture A 20th Century History written by Richard Poulin and published by . This book was released on 2012-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative volume is the first to provide the design student, practitioner, and educator with an invaluable comprehensive reference of visual and narrative material that illustrates and evaluates the unique and important history surrounding graphic design and architecture. Graphic Design and Architecture, A 20th Century History closely examines the relationship between typography, image, symbolism, and the built environment by exploring principal themes, major technological developments, important manufacturers, and pioneering designers over the last 100 years. It is a complete resource that belongs on every designer’s bookshelf.