SECOND SURFACE LESLIE ROWLAND CREATES CULTURAL IMPACT WITH FINE ART FURNISHINGS By Jennifer Henry May 30, 2007 Poet, painter and pop feminist Leslie Rowland is unapologetic about her unconventional medium. The former environmental science student passionately pursues the redefinition of art by recycling and refinishing furnishings that are often found in thrift stores. “Everything should be covered in art,” she laughs. Rowland insists canvas isn’t the only suitable surface for paint. “After a few weeks, a painting just becomes part of the wall,” she explains. “But you use your dresser everyday and you’re forced to notice it, to think about it, to appreciate it — and it’s art.” During her studies at Evergreen University, Rowland toured the Himalayas to conduct a cultural impact study that still inspires her a decade later. In addition to the ancient surfaces with the patina of countless coats of paint, worn by weather and eons of age that are regularly reflected in Rowland’s works, the artist incorporates life lessons she gleaned from the cultures she has visited. “These were cultures that were pure, untouched by outside influences, where we would be huffing and puffing up the mountain, complaining that our feet hurt and a monk with newspaper wrapped around his feet would breeze past us,” she says. “I realized they had something we don’t.” That “something” Rowland says, is embodied in her use of post-consumer goods, philosophical snippets and weathered aesthetics. Considered junk by collectors who deem them unsalvageable, the pieces she chooses always need some serious TLC before she can concentrate on the surface. “Some of them are literally falling apart but figuring out how to put them back together is part of the process,” she says. As for the iconography, poems and quotes that adorn Rowland’s already charming paint-caked and crackled surfaces, the artist says she sticks to three themes. “Silly and a little sarcastic or deeply philosophical, or both,” she says with a smile. Covering the “both” category with purring panache is Rowland’s “Femme Fatale” series, featuring silver screen sirens such as the notoriously feisty feline Zsa Zsa Gabor, who remind Rowland to “rule with a velvet glove.” Rowland’s piece, “Zsa Zsa’s Secret,” is spelled out in classic typewriter characters across a chest of drawers inspired by Gabor’s salacious stance on feminism and the silver screen star’s infamous quote, “The women’s movement hasn’t changed my sex life. It wouldn’t dare.” Pope Pius XII’s love for libations is immortalized on a cherry red wine cart with his exultation, “Wine in itself is an excellent thing.” Rowland’s philosophy often follows function; a dilapidated tea table project stood incomplete until she was inspired to pen a poem entitled “Tea with the Devil,” in which an old woman discovers the secret to reclaiming her youth from a beguiling Beelzebub. Though many of Rowland’s pieces share the artist’s distinctive surfaces, decoupage images and embossed typeface, each one is unique. “They all have their own story,” she says. “Sometimes they tell me what it is when I find them, sometimes I just make it up as I go along. But in the end they always become art.” Get beneath the surface at www.habitatdesignstudios.com Photography By Ryan Weber