Lost highways revisited

"We can only pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves." - John Buchan.

When archeologists of the far-distant future unearth the remains of America in the mid-1900's, they may well gaze upon the hot-dog stand and the filling station with all the wonder with which we gaze upon the aqueducts of ancient Rome - or they may not, if there are no remnants to see. Artist David Malcolm Rose, in his collection of scale-model reproductions of those icons of a half-century ago, has preserved for posterity a slice of a culture just about dead - has sanctified what Nietzsche called "knowledge of the past...for the service of the future."

Rose's "Lost Highways" is a series of 13 tableaus, each telling a tale of loss -- if not of a former glory, at least of an independent and an entrepreneurial spirit that once was at large in the land. "Navajo Rugs," for example, depicting a trading post/tourist trap on Route 66 (the most famous of Lost Highways) near Albuquerque, is emblematic of the roadside business that was in Rose's words, "like a little laboratory": The owner could experiment with different things that might work, from rugs to jewelry to snakes. In the end, though, nothing worked, as the Interstate system left hundreds of such miniature proving grounds high and dry.

Rose rues the loss of the independent operator, and with him the climate of "individual thought, originality, and, to a great degree, regional diversity." In his models he has sought to express that loss as something abandoned, or abdicated. Having turned our backs on what no longer worked in order to rush headlong into the future, we will be judged, Rose says, by what we chose to leave behind.

Rose left behind his early dreams of being an archeologist because of a lukewarm interest in conventional academics. He developed a love of art as a teenager, in the 1960's, but he decried the lack of what might be called a social conscience in the art of that era. Drafted into the Army in 1969, he wangled his way into welding school, and later landed a job as an illustrator.

After the service he drifted a while then settled in Arkansas. He enrolled in college art classes but once again came up against conventional beliefs, which saw art as an intellectual exercise, not a craft. "I made slapdash abstract pieces and got good grades, but, in my heart, I was always a realist," he says. "I liked art for the product."

After college he spent about a decade "painting, screen printing, glass blowing, throwing pots and building and carving all manner of sculpture." When he went to work in the mid-'80's for a company in Manhattan that built models for architects, he found his niche.

In creating his "Lost Highways" models, Rose molded and welded sheets of plastic, and painted and textured the surfaces. He worked from photographs he'd taken on his travels, faithful to the realism he cherished.

After he moved back to Arkansas, he met his wife, Angela, and eventually the couple came to Tennessee, with a two-year plan of finding a quiet little town in which to live while Angela got her MBA, whereupon they'd head out to the "bright lights, big city." As it happened, they fell in love with the little town - Watertown - and had a couple of babies.

"We're in the fifth year of our two-year plan," Rose says.

The couple's 1936 Craftsman Bungalow is a work in progress - house restoration is one of Rose's avocations - and while he plays Mr. Mom Rose is working on another project, "Buried Alive in the Blues," a collection of models of small, forsaken businesses in the Arkansas Delta. "I always took a lot of photographs," he says of the area that was endlessly fascinating to him.

"Lost Highways" was the work of more than 20 years. (Rose actually began driving around the country in the '60's, and so was a witness to the gradual demise of the subculture he portrays.) The collection is currently on display at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green (KY), and it will show at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Smithville (TN) from March 11 to April 17. Rose is looking for other long-term shows, and he'd love to show his Blues collection in England.

"They know all about (the culture of) the blues there," he says. "They just don't know what it looks like."

Contact David Malcolm Rose at 615-237-9195. Visit his terrific website at www.davidmalcolmrose.com.