(Watts Towers, under maintainence)
The Watts House Project is an artist driven urban initiative led by Edgar Arceneaux. The projects intention is to revitalize the low income neighborhood surrounding Watts Towers, a United States National Historic Landmark, and one of Los Angeles’ best known examples of vernacular architecture. Constructed by Italian immigrant, Simon Rodia over the spam of 33 years, the Gaudiesque structure rises over about 100 feet and is made mostly out of rebar, found pottery, and bottles.
For the next 5 years the Watts House project will refurbish four houses a year on 107th street .The project is inspired by Rick Lowe, the mastermind behind Project Row Houses, a public art project in Houston.
The Watts House project mission statement is to:
“Develop an incremental, nuanced and sustainable model that marries ecological concerns and practice with social and cultural remedies. The neighborhood surrounding the Watts Towers presents a stark contrast to the well-maintained aesthetics of this national monument, and currently the residents have limited means to capitalize socially or economically on this cultural currency. By creating a physical and social infrastructure for creativity, WHP will catalyze artistic production and community pride of place, forming partnerships that can lead to real solutions, hope, and change.”
(project board)
When first considering being involved in this project I approached with caution. Artist community collaboratives run the risk of imposing art world pretension irrelevant to the communities that have been targeted, resulting in a product that only serves as an artifact of the misunderstanding and hubris of the artists involved. The Watts House project manages to avoid much of these problems through real honest collaboration and discussion to meet needs of the community with creative solutions.
Artforum and the Los Angeles times covered the project.. You can even see a video where I’m painting precariously here!...http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-watts2-2008nov02,0,7393094.story
2 comments:
Cool Corrie!
I had read about this, it is great to see you were involved.
This is like what's going on in Braddock in Pittsburgh. I don't know enough about it but I do wonder about how the artists are going about listening and responding to the community's needs.
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