Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Acknowledgments xi
4. introduction. Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts and the Search for Common Ground 1
5. part 1. Situating Sabato Rodia and the Watts Towers: Art Movements, Cultural Contexts, and Migrations
6. Local Art, Global Issues: Tales of Survival and Demise Among Contemporary Art Environments 29
7. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: Structure and Performance in Rodia’s Watts Towers 69
8. Sam Rodia’s Watts Towers in Six Sections in Succession 79
9. Without Precedent: The Watts Towers 91
10. An Era of Grand Ambitions: Sam Rodia and California Modernism 103
11. A California Detour on the Road to Italy: The Hubcap Ranch, the Napa Valley, and Italian American Identity 109
12. The Gigli of Nola During Rodia’s Times 125
13. The Literary and Immigrant Contexts of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers 145
14. Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts: Art, Migration, and Italian Imaginaries 155
15. “Why a Man Makes the Shoes?”: Italian American Art and Philosophy in Sabato Rodia’s Watts Towers 183
16. Parallel Expressions: Artistic Contributions of Italian Immigrants in the Río de la Plata Basin of South America at the Time of Simon Rodia 205
17. part 2. The Watts Towers Contested: Conservation, Guardianship, and Cultural Heritage
18. Fifty Years of Guardianship: The Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts (CSRTW) 225
19. A Custody Case: Ownership of Rodia’s Towers 245
20. Nuestro Pueblo: The Spatial and Cultural Politics of Los Angeles’s Watts Towers 251
21. Reading the Watts Towers, Teaching Los Angeles: Storytelling and Public Art 275
22. Spires and Towers Between Tangible, Intangible, and Contested Transnational Cultural Heritage 289
23. part 3. The Watts Towers and Community Development 307
24. Artists in Conversation 309
25. Building Community Through Self- Awareness and Self- Expression 327
26. Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers: Sociopolitical Realities, Economic Underdevelopment, and Renaissance: Yesterday and Today 337
27. afterword. Personal Refl ections on the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative 343
28. A.1. Interview of S. Rodia, with Bill Hale and Ray Wisniewsky 351
29. A.2. Interview with Simon Rodia, by William Hale and Ray Wisniewsky “at the Towers Site, Standing Outside Rodia’s House,” 1953 359
30. A.3. Conversation with Sam Rodia, by Mae Babitz and Jeanne Morgan 363
31. A.4. Interviews with S. Rodia, by Ed Farrell, Jody Farrell, Bud Goldstone, and Seymour Rosen 369
32. A.5. Report on Visits to Simon Rodia, Made to CSRTW, from Jody Farrell (November, 1961), Re: A.4. Interview with Rodia, by Bud Goldstone, Seymour Rosen, Ed Farrell, and Jody Farrell 375
33. A.6. Letter to the CSRTW, by Claudio Segre [Segrè], January 26, 1962, Re: Visit in Martinez, California, January 25, 1962 378
34. A.7. “New Yorker Reporter [Calvin Trillin] Visits Rodia” 384
35. A.8. Conversations with Rodia, Report by Jeanne Morgan, September 10, 1964 392
36. A.9. Last Conversation with Sam Rodia, Report by Jeanne Morgan, December 23, 1964 396
37. A.10. Interviews with S. Rodia, by Norma Ashley- David (with Jonathan David) 398
38. A.11. Interview (Excerpts) with Rodia’s Neighbors (“Pete Scanlon’s in- laws”), by Bud Goldstone, Long Beach, California, 1963 412
39. A.12. Interview with S. Rodia, by Nicholas King, Martinez, California, September, 1960 415
40. Notes 425
41. Contributors 459
42. Index 465