Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village

Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
California Historical Landmark #939
Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, September 2008
Location:	4595 Cochran St Simi Valley, California
Coordinates:	34°16′44″N 118°42′14″W
Architect:	Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey
Architectural style:	Other
Governing body:	Private
NRHP Reference#:	96001076
CHL #:	939
Added to NRHP:	October 25, 1996

Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, also known as Bottle Village, is a folk art piece, located in Simi Valley, California.

This assemblage is one of California's Twentieth Century Folk Art Environments. In 1956, Tressa Prisbrey, then 59 years old, started building a "village" of shrines, walkways, sculptures, and buildings from recycled items and discards from the local landfill. She worked for 25 years creating one structure after another to house her collections. Bottle Village is California Historical Landmark number 939. It is also a Ventura County Cultural Landmark, and has historic designation from the City of Simi Valley. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

It was officially closed in 1984 and severely damaged during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. As of 2011 it is maintained by the Preserve Bottle Village committee and is open to the public by appointment.

There is now a way for visitors and/or people interested in Bottle Village, to make a donation here: http://bottlevillagestuff.web.officelive.com/pavetheway.aspx

Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey

Tressa Luella Schaefer was born in Easton Minnesota the year of 1896. She attended school but only until the age of 12 and studied mostly politics in North Dakota. At the age of 15, Tressa married the ex-husband of her sister, Theodore Grinolds who was 37 years her senior (52 years old). The marriage with Theordore only lasted 14 years and within those years she bore seven children. After Theodore's passing at age 72, Tressa and her seven children moved up to Seattle where she married an unnamed and unemployed man. Their marriage was very short lived. Over the course of her life, she had witnessed the passing of six out of her seven children (4 boys, 2 girls).

In 1946, Tressa made the move to Santa Susana, California, now known as Simi Valley, California. Ten years after the big move, Tressa met her husband, Al Prisbrey who bought one-third of an acre located on Cochran Street. Both brought in a trailer to live in and removed the tires and hid them in an effort to stay grounded on the lot. When Tressa first moved to Santa Susana, she had a large collection of 17,000 pencils which had previously been her hobby. In an effort to find a place to put them, she decided she wanted to make a house for her pencils to stay. At the age of 60, she began looking around to buy cinder-blocks to build with but came to discover the prices were way our of her range. Tressa stumbled upon a dump where she realized that bottles would be perfect to build with. When she returned home, she realized with her were 1,000,015 bottles. She began going to her sister, Hattie's house and made cement by hand and built her first bottle house by hand. This is when Bottle Village began to take form. Grandma Prisbrey mentioned she did not begin this project to gain attention but as an outpost as well as a place to keep all of her things. She was very much a collector as well as a recycler. She was interested in the fact that everything has a purpose and is special and unique and that is exactly what she brings to bottle village. Not just in the visuals but the overall feeling you receive from being present.

Prisbrey left the Village due to failing health in 1982 at the age of 86 to take up residence with her sole-surviving child in San Francisco. In July 1986 the property was gift deeded to the Preserve Bottle Village committee. Tressa Prisbrey died in 1988.

Bottle Village

Prisbrey's original idea was to build a wall to keep away the smell and dust of the adjacent turkey farm and to simply create a structure where she could store her 17,000 commemorative pencils. They had spent all their money paying for the property so she resorted to visiting a local dump where she found thousands of colored bottles. She started with a wall and continued to build until she had constructed 16 buildings and structures made of glass and assorted other materials, a mosaic sidewalk, the Leaning Tower of Bottle Village, the Dolls Head Shrine, Cleopatra's Bedroom, the Round House, and more.

Bottle Village first began when Tressa was between the age of 55 and 60. When building bottle village, no help was given and everything is made from hand and all recycled materials. One of the shrines that can be seen at Bottle Village is called The Headlight Garden. This garden was made for her then 35 year old daughter who had been diagnosed with cancer. Her daughter loved flowers so Tressa decided to make her a rose garden made out of headlights and recycled materials. Before her daughter's passing, she would love to wake up every morning and sit by the garden in silence. According to Tressa, the day her daughter died, the headlights stopped working.

There are heart, diamond, and spade stepping stones that symbolize when Tressa was in love with gambling. She made the forms out of cement but then filled them with random recycled things like scissors, etc. Bottle village offers not just buildings made out of bottles but wishing wells made from tiles, the ground is paved with recyclables, a doll shrine, a leaning tower of bottles and much more. Each building also has its own theme. For example, a doll house was built to house Grandma Prisbrey's doll collection which held 600 dolls. Grandma Prisbrey mentioned every day she would go into that house and dress up some of the dolls.

When visitors would come to Bottle Village when Grandma Prisbrey was still alive, she would first take them on a tour but then end in her meditation room where she would allow them to meditate as well as listen to her sing different songs. She would charge only 75 cents a visit but people would frequently give her more.

Each building was constructed around a specific theme. As of 2011, there remain three houses fully intact. Prisbrey sold the property in 1972, but two years later took up a position as a caretaker at Bottle Village. At the point, her work was being exhibited in the United States and Europe.

In 1981 Prisbrey received an eviction notice from Ollie Phillips, her landlord. He fenced the property and threatened to destroy Bottle Village. Just after agreeing to sell the property for $87,500, Phillips was fatally wounded in what was later described as an “accidental shooting.”

Earthquake

The 1994 Northridge earthquake struck eight miles away and badly damaged the Village. Because of the severe damage, the Preserve Bottle Village committee applied for FEMA funding, receiving almost US$500,000. In January 1997, Simi Valley's Congressman and former Mayor, Elton Gallegly introduced "The Bottle Bill", "To prohibit Federal funding for earthquake-related repairs or restoration of Bottle Village in Simi Valley, CA."^{[citation needed]} It did not become law but FEMA funding was withdrawn.

Recognition

In 1979 Bottle Village was named a Ventura County Cultural Landmark. In 1981 it was declared a California State Historical Landmark National Register. In 1996, two years after the Northridge earthquake and still in ruin, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It has been the subject of scholarly inquiry.

Cultural References

The Doll Head Shrine has created a cult following and was reproduced on the cover of Wall of Voodoo’s chart-topping single Mexican Radio in 1982.

The Village inspired a 32 page children s book Bottle Houses: The Creative World of Grandma Prisbrey by Melissa Eskridge Slaymaker.

Exhibitions

1974–1976 "Naives and Visionaries", sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

1975 "America Now", sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency (traveling European exhibition)

1976 "Grandma Prisbrey", Woman's Building, Los Angeles, CA (solo exhibition)

1977 "In Celebration of Ourselves", Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

1979–1981 "A Look at the Art of the 70's", sponsored by the International Communication Agency (traveling exhibition)

1984 "Visions of Paradise", Beyond Baroque, Venice, CA "Bits and Pieces: The Dream-builders of California", Chevron Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1985 "Divine Disorder: Folk Art Environments of California", Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA (traveling exhibition)

1985–1986 "A Time to Reap", Co-sponsored by Seton Hall Univ. NJ, & the Museum of American Folk Art, NY (traveling exhibition)

1986 "Cat and a Ball on a Waterfall: 200 Years of California Painting and Sculpture", Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA

1988 "Not so Naive: Bay Area Artists and Outsider Art", San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum, San Francisco, CA

1989 "Forty Years of California Assemblage", UCLA Whyte Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (traveling exhibition) "Women in American Architecture", Pacific Design Center , Los Angeles, CA (traveling exhibition)

1990 "Ageless" , the Woman's Building, Los Angeles, CA

1992 "Reflections of Bottle Village", Simi Valley Cultural Center, Simi Valley, CA

1995 "Visions from the Left Coast" Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA

1996–1999 "Recycled-Reseen" Santa Fe Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico (traveling)

2000 Outsider Art window display, Hennessy + Ingalls, Santa Monica, CA

Gallery of images

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  Historical plaques at entrance

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  Bottle Village overview

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  Doll heads

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  Bottle sculptures

See also

• List of Registered Historic Places in Ventura County, California

References

• "Ventura". California Historical Landmarks. Office of Historic Preservation. http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=21535. Retrieved 2005-08-26. 

External links

• Bottle Village home page
• /YouTube Bottle Village Channel-Videos, Interviews, "Pave the Way"-"Bottle Village Walkway of Fame" Check out the "Favorites"