Page 23 - the NOISE November 2012

WHEN LES IS MORE
STORY & PHOTO BY SARAH GIANELLI
arrrt and the making of portmantous
“Welcome to the Skyslum Studios!” bellows Leslie (Les) MacDowell as he opens the door to the ramshackle Jerome apartment he’s called home and “laboratorium” since
1999. “This is not a crime scene; it’s a grime scene.”
“Right now I’m counting whisky bottles,” he says, referring to the heap of plastic flasks that bury most of a large round table in the center of the room. He has affixed the small $7 stickers to the shade of an old metal desk lamp giving it the look of a
densely petaled 1960s bathing cap.
“Medicaid is going to cost me about this much each month
and this is representative of those units. It’s part of the Scottish savings plan. The question is, will I be able to live without all these units and appreciate my Medicaid? They’re stealing my cider!”
Mr. MacDowell’s living quarters are something of a choreo- graphed chaos. There is so much to absorb — signage, sculp- ture and paintings amidst all the trappings of his particular, one might say peculiar, domestic life — that it is difficult to hone in on any one component of this living installation.
The ceiling is covered in shiny Mylar, quilted silver insula- tion and floral wallpaper. Bright orange and yellow paper plates covered with plastic plant liners are fastened upside down to catch leaks and help hold up the ceiling. A geometric design made out of rubber gasket tubing covers the “blemish” of a no longer working light fixture. “I also envisioned some kind of reckless pinball game ...” he says.
A saffron robe in the beginning stages of disintegration hangs from the ceiling — a work in progress. An oval mir- ror framed in chipped black glass has the words self-portrait scribbled on it. Finger paint-esque Jerome landscapes are suspended from hangars. Blown-up squares of green plastic packing material winds around a sculpture made of swords and hubcaps.
“Someone was walking down the street complaining about it, so I took it away from her and turned it into a python,” he explains. “Something every Scottish lad should have draped across his shoulder, don’t you think?”
A rack of shirts forms a canopy over a twin bed — the only clear surface in the room — amongst empty picture frames connected by cobwebs.
“It might be a bit feral, but this is my stuff,” he says. “Right now it is covered with dust. It’s a Buddhist thing, helps hold things together. But there are some 140 wheels on the ground in this room so I can move stuff around to clean.” Typical of his tendency to follow up seriousness with humor, Mr. MacDow- ell adds, “It’s also a safety mechanism. If there’s an earthquake I can just ride a piece of furniture down the hill. See you in Centerville!”
A sign reading “Area Restricted to Authorized Visitors” marks the doorway to the “north studio,” a window-walled room with a million dollar view, filled with his late brother’s clothes and two large trash bags of more whisky bottles.
“Here’s the scullery,” he says, moving into the kitchen. “That used to be an exit to a great deck,” he says, pointing to an opening in the wall sealed off with corrugated plastic. “The deck fell down.” A sign commemorates the day — DECKDOWN Oct. 29 2003 No Foolin’.
A greasy, crumb-covered griddle and stacks of canned and dry goods occupy most of a sagging workbench. A towel covered chair and a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap indicates it is also where he bathes. Mr. MacDowell does have running water and a toilet, but no tub or shower. He bathes out of buckets.
The clue to the glue (or, in Mr. MacDowell’s case, more likely tape or screws) that holds it all together — and legitimizes Mr. Mac- Dowell’s art as more than a portrait of life on the fringe — can be found in three words that reappear in handwritten notices posted up around his home: arrrt, arrt and portmantous (when questioned about the spelling of the last, he admits he’s been known to need an editor). They provide entryway into a philosophy born out of ne- cessity, conviction and aesthetic preference that has manifested in his art and the way he lives.
When he started making art in earnest in 1999, his philosophy was “arrrt” (which he growls every time he says), the three “r’s” standing for “reduce reuse recycle.” It evolved into “arrt” when he realized nothing is sustainable and the only answer was to “Refuse refuse” entirely.
Portmanteau is a French word for two or more objects that be- come something else when assembled. It originally referred to a suitcase made by lashing two wicker baskets together, and then be- came a literary term for a word that blends the sounds and mean- ings of two words, such as “motel” for “motor” and “hotel.”
“I tried to come up with the criteria of the art, what it would be, the parameters in which it would become what it should be. A piece of junk from China with a piece of junk from India, turned inside out becomes something else. That’s one reason I appreci- ate my media — the cast offs, the throw-aways. ‘Well if it served its purpose! Well, not yet.’ A great deal of effort was put into mak- ing that piece of plastic that is so worthless now. There’s gotta be something else to it. If we live long enough we’ll be mining landfills looking for a decent newspaper that’s still dry and readable, or used baby diapers to make socks out of.”
One of Mr. MacDowell’s portmanteau pieces hangs from the ceil- ing in the main room from the clamps of a clothes hanger. It con- sists of tattered green poster board with a metal circle dangling in front of it. Along the bottom, a curtain rod that tips like a scale has the word “iS” on a green button in the center, and two little “is’s” on each end.
“It’s a balancing act of what is,” explains Mr. MacDowell. It’s also a political commentary on the Bill Clinton scandal and the maze of semantics in which the president tried to lose his interrogators.
“It’s all just what it was when I picked it up. It’s self-supporting. It holds itself in that position, there’s no welding. It spins back and forth for a sense of shadow and lets you know ‘what is is’.”
Mr. MacDowell was a student at Fort Wayne Art Institute when he was derailed from that path by the Vietnam War — a subject that, when it comes up, lights a fire of contradictory sen- timents in Mr. MacDowell. On the one hand, he says he despises nationalism but thinks everyone should be drafted, “Even grand- mothers. They can fluff the pillows before we come into the bar- racks, ‘How was your day son? Good target practice?’ Everyone should serve something in a deliberate manner. There are legiti- mate reasons to not be involved in the war effort, that’s for sure. But we could build roads or pick weeds.”
After the war, Mr. MacDowell focused on raising a family, and worked in the janitorial business, in Hollywood as a grip and utili- ties man, as an unpaid Jehovah’s Witness minister, at a cremato- rium, and, when he moved to Jerome in 1988, in fine dining at Enchantment Resort and The Asylum Restaurant.
Mr. MacDowell remembers visiting Jerome in 1958 and even then, recognized it as a great place.
“I saw it as a 10-year old,” he says. “Incredibly impressive. No grass. No green. Nothing. It was industry still — railroad tracks and cobble stones, a lot more buildings, but certainly derelict. It had been five years empty. That winter, my brother and I put to- gether a train set in the basement that had a mountain on it that was Jerome, so I was always thinking about it.”
Even though he doesn’t have a phone, Mr. MacDowell isn’t that hard to get a hold of. He can be spotted making his rounds throughout the day, stopping briefly to converse or observe on a main street bench, visiting with Jack and Lisa Rappaport at the Twin Star, or popping into a friends’ house just long enough for a smoke, a swill of beer or spot of whisky. To every lady he passes, he gallantly raises his hat and offers a humble bow of gratitude.
“These days, I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking,” he says. “And trying not to, in fact. To forget a lot of things we’re certainly not needed to know. What do I serve now? All these wonderful
basic things of just being a kind, benevolent person, but yet be- ing able to make a joyful noise so somebody knows you’re com- ing down the street. I’ve hit my head so many times, God knows I don’t want to lead with that anymore.”
| Sarah Gianelli may indeed know what the meaning of ‘is’ is. sarahgianelli@hotmail.com
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