By Trina Kleist
Lesson learned: Figure out what you’re here for.
Brian Chambers has blended love for his family with passion for art, opening a new space amid the COVID-19 pandemic. His gallery, The Chambers Project in mid-town Grass Valley, showcases a psychedelia-fueled aesthetic where he offers multi-media events, pioneers collaborative creation, draws innovators from around the world and boosts the local economy.
When Chambers was 16, the Tennessee native found his life’s project: He started collecting concert poster art from the late 1960s and 1970s – think Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore in San Francisco and the Grateful Dead at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Mich. He expanded into album covers and the artists who drew them – such as Yes and Roger Dean – organizing shows around the country.
Drawn by Nevada County’s natural beauty and creative ecosystem, Chambers landed here – strategically, he says – in 2008. As social media changed relationships between artists and art galleries, Chambers recalls feeling threatened and worried about his business model. “But it became apparent (Instagram) was going to grow, so you figure out a way to work it to your advantage and bring it to a positive reality,” he says.
Meanwhile, his shows often took him far from family. Chambers wanted his two young daughters to see up close the lesson he had been blessed to learn: “You can turn your passion and what you love into your job.” Now 43, he recalls this epiphany: “I came to a crossroads: How am I ever going to teach this to my kids if I’m doing my biggest shows in Miami?” He yearned to pour “all this love, effort, energy and finances” into the place where he lived.
“My kids are here,” he says pragmatically. “They get to see what I do.”
Curating en vivo
In November 2021, amid the pandemic’s second wave, he opened The Chambers Project. “It was an opportunity to de-stigmatize psychedelics,” he says, and his website calls it “the world’s leading psychedelic art gallery.” Inside the corrugated metal building, works evoking a range of roots portray other-worldly landscapes, fantastic cubes and dizzying swirls of finely drawn shapes and carefully blended color. They speak to Chambers’ own artistic viewpoint: “I like to wonder what I’m looking at.”
“You get a bunch of magicians in a room together, and magic happens.”
Brian Chambers, The Chambers Project
His present positive reality includes bringing together gallery, artist and the viewing, appreciating and buying public. Chambers has encouraged several artists from across the country to relocate to Nevada County. He calls himself “old-school,” meaning, he loves creating events where people gather in-person around art and artists, talk, shake hands, celebrate and make friends. “I feel like I’m a conduit to bring that around,” Chambers reflects. “I’m in a very fortunate situation to bring the general public in a town like ours, hand-in-hand with world-class artists who will be viewed in art history, for the rest of time, as leaders of the pack.”
Early in his career, he grew fascinated with collaborative art processes, in which artists come together for short-term, large-format projects. Gallery owners who had been mentoring him were not interested, so 14 years ago, he started exploring. Now, Chambers makes collaboration a focal point. Curation includes gathering artists who might not otherwise meet – perhaps during a music festival in Yosemite or a weekend in Acapulco – and encouraging them to take chances they might not otherwise take. “They produce masterpieces in a few days,” Chambers says, and their wonder-inspiring results have become his niche. “They’re getting better, faster, more efficient,” he says, and he ponders how far the movement has come. “Collaborative arts weren’t accepted by the fine arts community. We have redefined and reset that, and collaborative arts are now seen as an amazing movement.
“And, it’s fun!”
The Chambers Project
627 E. Main St., Grass Valley, CA 95945
(530) 777-0330
