It's ironic that I ran an art gallery for so long because I really don't like galleries
and I don't think that they are as effective as they could be in terms of providing a cultural
service to our society.
The art world is a very closed world that doesn't affect many people.
I think that I'm part of a generation who's not afraid of doing many things, coming out
of a generation of people who are very focused on the idea of a major.
If there's an overarching word that I would use for everything, I would say artist.
I prefer to deliver messages if I can in a more mainstream way.
Like other creative people that work in a lot of different mediums, everything informs
everything else.
That's what artists do, like we are the storyteller people of our world and you know, whether
you're doing a record album magazine, a film, or a painting, it's just really storytelling.
One of the things I love about Sam Rodilla who built the Watts Towers was that his real
motivation for building those was to make something that never existed before in the
world.
Simon Rodilla, tile-setter by trade, Italian-born, American for half a century, builder of defiant
towers.
He worked all day long on construction sites, building buildings, and doing like the very
tough stone carving and then in his free time he was building these towers.
They're probably one of the most important works of sculpture in the state of California,
but they're rarely, rarely visited.
They're forgotten.
I've always been attracted to things that are kind of secret, these beautiful things
that exist outside of the mainstream flow of energy.
And the fact that it happened in Watts is completely arbitrary, which I think is really
beautiful too.
There were two locations that he could buy at the time, Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire,
where the Beverly Hilton is right now, and the other was this plot of land in Watts.
They were the same price.
And he chose the one in Watts because it was near the train tracks.
And this is where Sam Rodilla found all the material that he used to make the towers.
He didn't buy anything to make them.
He made it all out of things that he found while wandering along these tracks.
I love the Watts Towers because it's a situation where one individual took it upon himself
using money from his own pocket completely to try to build something monumental.
I believe that those who practice what we now call avant-garde or what we used to call
avant-garde are those who are not afraid to push and maybe the avant-garde are not always
the most successful.
The avant-garde are not the most well-known, but they are those who are not afraid to try
something different.
Sam Rodilla was one of those people.
He was willing to be called crazy for 35 years every single day.
But he had a vision and he had an idea and he made it happen.
And it's a great testament to the power of creativity and the power of human beings to
make something happen.
And so I think if I have a certain definition or way of the avant-garde, it's somebody
who's not afraid to make a dream come true.
