Watts House Project (WHP) is an artist-driven urban revitalization project centered around the historic Watts Towers in Watts, Los Angeles. Directed by preeminent Los Angeles artist Edgar Arceneaux, WHP is a large-scale artwork-as-urban-development engaging art and architecture as a catalyst for expanding and enhancing community. By building a social infrastructure for creativity to flourish, Watts House Project hopes to contribute to a healthier, more vibrant community. WHP operates with the understanding that social and economic challenges are tied to basic ecological problems and aims to develop an incremental, nuanced and sustainable model that marries ecological concerns and practice with social and cultural remedies. By creating a physical and social infrastructure for creativity, WHP will catalyze artistic production and community pride of place, forming partnerships that can lead to real solutions, hope, and change.

Edgar Arceneaux is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles. His multivalent practice includes exquisite drawings, collaborative installations, community-based social sculpture initiatives and large-scale film projects. His recent solo shows include The Agitation of Expansion at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (2008), Snake River at the REDCAT Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2006), and The Alchemy of Comedy Stupid at ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects (2006). Arceneaux's work was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, and the 2008 California Biennial. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2001, his BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1996, and also studied at Skowhegan School in Maine and the Fachholchschule Aachen, in Aachen, Germany. Arceneaux was awarded the USA Broad Fellowship for 2007 by United States Artists.