I first met Tressa “Grandma” Prisbrey in 1974, when I was eighteen years old. What began as fascination with this remarkable woman and the world she had created grew into a deep connection with a fellow artist from another era.

Over the following years, I worked closely with Grandma at Bottle Village and traveled with her to exhibitions and seminars from San Francisco to La Jolla. Until she moved away in 1982, I spent countless hours beside her—giving tours, repairing sculptures and assemblages, and helping organize the nonprofit that now owns the property.

Grandma built her extraordinary environment largely from the discarded material culture of her time—toy pistols, dolls, television tubes, tiles, automobile parts, bottles, and household objects. Things others threw away became her artistic palette. She seemed to “paint” with objects, responding instinctively to color, transparency, reflection, and light.

The result was a spontaneous, handmade fantasyland entirely of her own invention—unconventional and wonderfully eccentric, yet strangely as comfortable and familiar as a grandmother’s home.

Perhaps most remarkable, Grandma began this monumental undertaking at about sixty years old, without formal artistic or architectural training. At a time when older, self-taught women working outside the established art world were rarely recognized, she simply claimed her own space and transformed it according to her imagination.

Her achievement resonated with a younger generation of women artists. In 1976, the Feminist Studio Workshop at Los Angeles’ Woman’s Building celebrated Bottle Village with an exhibition and invited Grandma to speak about her life and work. Artists including Betye Saar encountered the Village, and Alison Saar later created a work in homage to Bottle Village and Watts Towers.

In 1996, Bottle Village became the first art environment created by a self-taught female artist to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But recognition alone cannot preserve it.

Years of deterioration and earthquake damage have brought us to a decisive moment. The surviving structures, sculptures, assemblages, and walkways must be stabilized, conserved, and thoughtfully rehabilitated before more irreplaceable details disappear.

For me, this responsibility remains deeply personal. I knew Grandma, worked beside her, and witnessed the determination behind what she created. Bottle Village is a testament to what one fiercely individual and imaginative woman could build with her own hands from the things everyone else had thrown away.

Our goal is not to make Bottle Village new again, but to preserve its authenticity so future generations can experience its color, humor, luminosity, eccentricity, and wonder.

More than fifty years after I first walked into Grandma’s world, I believe its future depends upon what we choose to do now.

The time to preserve it is now.

-Jeff Wack 2026