Appetite for Destruction

His parents moved to De Soto, a few miles south of St. Louis, when he was 7 years old. They were afraid that their son, a dyslexic boy who had already smashed in a brand-new Corvette's window, would become a juvenile delinquent in the city. So the family went back to his dad's farm, the one his mom had hated because there wasn't any running water.

In the country, he learned to shoot guns. "I learned how to shoot with a .22 and a tin can," Maclanahan recalls. "When I got older, I went hunting deer and squirrels. We'd always eat squirrels. It sounds weird, but we used to really like it. My mom fried it. It was like rabbit, kind of gamey."

He played football at De Soto High School and rode motocross. When he turned 18, he devoted himself full time to cars. But after losing a wheel during a jump and landing badly, Maclanahan couldn't walk for two months and gave up the fast driving. That's when he really got into art — mainly ceramics, which he studied during his first year at junior college.

He transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute after a recruiter visited his school and encouraged him to pursue art more seriously. Maclanahan was successful at the Art Institute and earned some recognition for his sculpting, but he found himself in trouble there, too. "I kicked in a few doors," he explains. "I used to get pretty drunk. But I worked pretty hard, also."

After working toward a master's of fine art degree at Boston University, Maclanahan went back to De Soto, where his dad built him a studio. During that time, he took up the family business in earnest and found out that he liked ranching — especially cattle auctions — better than he thought he would. But then he got in a fight with his dad, who, in the heat of the argument, called his artist son a faggot.

"I about punched him in the face," Maclanahan recalls. That's when he knew it was time to leave. Later, after his father died, he went back to help his mom, commuting between Kansas City and De Soto on his motorcycle.

In Kansas City, Maclanahan became an assistant to sculptors Dale Eldred and Jim Leedy back in the mid-'80s and worked for Boulevard Beer later in the decade. Around this time, he and a girlfriend ventured out to a demolition derby. He had grown up going to derbies every weekend and was excited about going back.

What he loves about the demolition derby is how perfectly democratic the sport is. The car is the great equalizer. It doesn't matter what gender you are, what race you are, how big you are, how strong you are. You just have to put the pedal to the floor, and then it's a matter of simple velocity, of objects in motion staying in motion until they collide at high speeds. The unpredictable crashing part is what Maclanahan calls "the abstract chaos of the derby."

Eventually, he got the idea to combine the demolition derby with art. What appealed to him most was the idea of making something and then letting it go. "You build it the best you can," he says of the derby car. "And then the idea is to destroy it. I got totally turned on by that."

Each car Maclanahan registers in a derby is a collaboration with other area artists, who paint hoods or contribute nice-looking "logos" for the doors. Maclanahan takes care of the mechanics so the car will run. Then he sends all that work, all that art, out to be smashed. He uses the remnants of the cars to make art inspired by the people who have driven them, and he films everything for a documentary he's making called We Ain't Stupid.

The title comes from a derby enthusiast whom Maclanahan and his crew interviewed at one event. Part of the way through the interview, the subject grew angry because he thought the artists were making fun of him. He started to walk away, but Maclanahan encouraged him to come back. The man stopped, looked back over his shoulder and said, "We ain't stupid."

The funny thing about stereotypes is how they tend to contradict themselves. Take the stereotype of the artist.

Artists, according to one myth, are privileged, snooty people sitting idly by, whimsically painting between nasal-voiced discussions about postmodernism, fancy berets sported all around. On the other hand, they're also thought to be dirty, smelly and broke. Not just broke but opposed to comfort and luxury and too impractical to do what's necessary to obtain comfort and luxury. And then there's the quaint stereotype invented by people who romanticize art, forgetting that art is work — physical work. Artists are often viewed as intellectuals, not laborers. An artist is liberal. An artist may have an accent but not a twang. And a man who is an artist is too intimate with his own feminine side for things like an NRA membership.