Bottom line is this, Leonard wanted everybody to know that "God is love." Some people would say it in church or a book, write it in letters or a song, maybe even paint it in a picture. Leonard built a mountain in the desert. Unbelievable. Over a hundred thousand gallons of paint (we brought him three more) went into the sculpture/structure. He mixed his own adobe with mud and hay that he found nearby, old tires and other castoffs from the desert helped him build his complex.

This iconic artist-built environment of towers, structures, sculptures, pavement and walls were designed and built solely by Simon Rodia, an Italian immigrant construction worker over a period of 33 years from 1921 to 1954, in his own small yard near the train tracks in Watts. The collection of 17 interconnected sculptural towers, architectural structures, and individual sculptural features and mosaics, harken back to his upbringing in Nola, Italy and the celebration of the Feast of San Paolino.

Two locations claim to be Sacajawea’s gravesite. One report suggests that Sacajawea died in 1812, from putrid fever, a few years after giving birth to her daughter Lizette. The record shows that the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake Squaw, died leaving an infant girl. There is no mention of Sacajawea’s name. There also was no mention of the daughter Lizette after this record. In contradiction, a Shoshone oral tradition relates that Sacajawea left her husband, Charbonneau, married a Comanche, and later in life returned to her home in Wyoming where she died in 1884 at the age of 100.

Snakes atop the walls, fabulous mosaics and a giant eagle with an Amazon warrior guiding it, Those are just some of the elements of the Magic Circle, created by Kiki de Saint Phalle, a French-born self-taught artist whose large scale sculptures earned her accolades in Europe. Influenced by figures such as Jean Dubuffet and Antoni Gaudi, she made her reputation in the Sixties with a series of giant female figures, the “Nana’s”.