Bottle Houses: The Creative World of Grandma Prisbrey

By Melissa Eskridge Slaymaker

Book Overview

Being inside one of Grandma Prisbrey's houses was like being inside a rainbow or a kaleidoscope or a jewel. A vibrant portrait of American visionary artist Grandma Prisbrey The walls of Grandma Prisbrey's houses glowed and glittered with color because she made them out of bottles. Large and small, fancy and plain, Grandma Prisbrey salvaged every bottle she could find. Soon people started calling Grandma Prisbrey an artist. "I can't even draw a car that looks like one," she said. "But I guess there are different kinds of art." Lush and lyrical, this is an evocative introduction to the world of visionary, or untrained, art.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805071318
• ISBN13: 9780805071313
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.3" x 0.4" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 5 to 9 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 4

Customer Reviews

People Who Build Glass Houses...

Bottle Houses tells the true story of Grandma Prisbey, artist, collector, and builder. Although not as famous as Simon Rhodia of Watts Tower fame, she similarly constructed edifices out of discarded glass and other objects. Her creative urge led to a whole complex of varied structures, united by the use of found objects. As Grandma Prisbey said, "What some people throw away, I believe I could wear to church." Unfortunately for her-and for us-some of the buildings were damaged by the 1994 quake in Simi Valley, California; however, much remains, and there is a "Preserve Bottle Village Committee" working to restore the Village. Melissa Slaymaker does a superb job of drawing us into the story. Right away, she describes Prisbey's, nonconformity, and independence: "...she didn't have a house. She was too busy to have one." "Grandma Prisbrey had some land in California, but she didn't have enough money to build a house in a regular way. But Grandma Prisbey wasn't the sort of person who did things in a regular sort of way." Prisbey went to the local dump, using "what some people throw away" including "furniture, stoves, refrigerators, dishes, clothes, batteries....even dolls. Hundreds of dolls." The most important of these junked items were the colored bottles. Using everything but milk bottles (apparently against the law) she stacked bottles atop each other and held them in pace with cement. With these as her basic building materials, she built bottle houses for her collections of pencils and dolls, a bottle chapel, bottle birdbath, wishing well, rumpus room, and the round house ("everything in it was round. It had a round fireplace, a round bed, and a round dresser with a round mirror over it." Other creative projects include a house of shells and a "singing tree," hung with thousands of bottles that rang like chimes. She built a pyramid out to headlights and 150 gold lipstick cases, and dyed her three cats (vegetable dye is supposedly safe) pink, green, and blue! Slaymaker and Paschkis portray Grandma Prisbey as an artist without formal training or conventional drawing talent, who still created beautiful, original, works that delight the eye and express her individuality. The bright illustrations and decorative "folkish" art designs by illustrator Julie Paschkis add greatly to Slaymaker's text. Paschkis captures the luminosity of the colored glass bottles, using shading and reflection in her gouache illustrations. Other illustrations are reminiscent of old stencil patterns and mid-20th century graphics. Paschkis scattered her drawings over the page, yet they retain a uniform style, echoing the feeling and look of Prisbey's Bottle Village. Colors have unusual and beautiful hues, and Paschkis conveys the vivid, multi-colored mosaics accurately and with flair. The back of the book shows photos of Grandma Prisbey, some of the structures and a link to the Preserve Bottle Village Committee website (http://echomatic.home.mindspring.com/by). I

"GRANDMA PRISBREY POWER"

Since the days when Simon Rodia built the "Watts Towers" in Los Angeles, I have wanted to visit other projects that were "flights of Imagination" ..... and this story of Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Houses naturally claims my applause. Here's to COLOR, CREATIVITY & INDEPENDENT THINKING ! What fun for the illustrator, and for us all! In 1956 Grandma P. left her open-road life to settle in Simi Valley,California. She needed room for her souvenir pencil collection first, and a bottle house was the result of salvaged bottles, a strong arm for mixing mortar and persistence. Her sons helped with roofing & hanging doors as her little 'compound' grew. But this was no Hyannisport! Tressa Prisbrey's unstifled creative juices led to other structures, small & tall: a house for dolls, a bottle chapel, birdbath, wishing well and a bottle Rumpus Room. There is a round House of bottles, and a Singing Tree where more than a thousand bottles hang & sing like wind chimes! She 'branched out' and used other materials, even potted cactus, and she laid pathways for the many gawking visitors & picture-takers. A "Preserve Bottle Village Committee" works now to protect the future of this imaginative artistry; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. REVIEWER mcHAIKU enthuses over the author & illustrator who bring us Grandma Prisbrey's colors bursting like Roman candles: a memorable legacy for all to share.

A world of glass

This beautifully illustrated children's book tells the story of charmingly quaint Grandma Prisbrey who builds herself a house made of empty bottles (and just a whee bit of mortar) -- making her feel as if she lived inside a rainbow or a diamond. A little glass shed for her pencil collection, a well (made of blue bottles, of course) and a glass chapel are added later on. The furniture -- if she does not build it herself, from bottles -- and all kinds of knick-knacks to make the houses even prettier come from the local dump. Sounds like a beautiful story? Well, it's a true story. Grandma Prisbrey lived in California, where she built "Bottle Village," later placed on the National Register of Historic Places. 1994, six years after her death, Bottle Village was seriously damaged by an earthquake. This book shows her creations when they were all still sparkling ...