Junk Sculptures in Lambland: Lindy Chambers, Then and Now
Samantha Hudd, Art Criticism and Writing
Imagine a world where boldly colored farm animals waltz amongst mobile homes, chain link fences, and large feathered creatures lie around them. Now you can, located just off E. Cesar Chavez street in Austin, Texas. The exhibit: Lindy Chambers, Then and Now, is a lively and personality-filled look at the artistic life and work of Bellville-based artist Lindy Chambers, and the whimsy and brightness that her art holds. Displayed in conjunction with Art Austin, this exhibition is on view now through May 11 at Women & Their Work in Austin, Texas.
The space itself was something that I found to be one of the most important parts of the exhibition, as it is not a large one and it is devoted entirely to the artistic expressions and greatness of women in the greater Austin area, as well as from all over Texas. It is a collaborative, yet intentional space, and it feels safe being in there. However, the only people in the building there at the time of my attendance included myself, my companion, and the receptionist on duty. It was eerily quiet, which added to the overall tone and my personal viewing experience, it was almost like I had to creep around to see the art, despite the very open layout of the building. Though the building itself is nestled in a residential neighborhood on one of the busiest streets in the state capitol, stepping in there immediately took me out of the chaos and into a new world, one where the beautifully erratic and alternative mind of Lindy Chambers is allowed to flourish and show us how she sees the world around her. Another interesting thing to note is how bare the exhibition is in comparison to the work being shown in it. None of the paintings or assemblages are labeled, leaving the viewer with no context other than the pamphlet given upon entry. I personally found it a bit disorienting without descriptive captions or labels, but it embodies the chaos that lies within Chambers’ artwork. All work on view is also available for purchase, including the junk assemblages.
Chambers herself is the epitome of an eclectic older lady, with one of her statement wardrobe pieces being her signature rounded-frame glasses, which bear an electric cobalt sort of hue. Her personal style reminds me of New York interior designer and fashion icon Iris Apfel. She speaks with kindness, and claims this exhibition to be “a visual map of how [her] work has developed over the last several years”, as stated in her introduction posted to the gallery website, a feat in which I believe she has achieved. The exhibition features Chambers’ art from the 1970s, when she was a student at the University of Texas at Austin, up until her more recent works. The pieces on display are a mix of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures that showcase Chambers’ diverse artistic interests and techniques. Chambers’ work has been exhibited widely in the United States, including at the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her work is also included in several public collections, such as the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Chambers’ early works from the 1970s are heavily influenced by the feminist art movement and explore themes of gender and identity. The pieces are characterized by their bold colors and expressive brushstrokes. In contrast, her recent works are slightly more subdued in color, again not by much, and focus on natural forms, such as trees, animals, and rocks, with an emphasis on texture and surface. Her work has also gotten more abstract as she’s aged, with an increase of assemblages solely made in 2022, all of which were on display.
Chambers with her painting, All too Well (Lambland) at Women & Their Work
Her paintings and assemblages take up large swaths of the previously bare white walls and concrete floors, drenching them with an assortment of colors, sometimes with googly eyes and feather boas. Pictured below is a quirky little furry pile dressed in neon shades, held together by questionable means.
Lindy Chambers, IU-82, 2021, Paper mache, vinyl tape, PVC pipe, fur, metal, pipe cleaners, 75 x 25 x 20”
Her work does not lack texture or individuality, in fact, it exudes it, and all of this is made apparent by this exhibition, her passion project. Chambers’ work does not have much consistency in terms of style, as she does not adhere to just one specific discipline or school of painting. She is multifaceted in her mediums of choice, ranging from paper mache sculpture, assemblage, metalwork, and zip tying objects to hyperrealistic, psychedelic painting. The sculptures lack concrete form, and are suspended from the ceilings or carelessly thrown into a mass on the ground. Her work ranges from showcasing recognizable images and themes from Texas life or roadsides, such as debris from construction, farm animals, and trailer parks, to complete and utter graphic abstraction. A piece that struck me as a personal favorite is All too Well (Lambland), created in 2019.
Lindy Chambers, All Too Well (Lambland), 2019
It is a massive painting, with dimensions of 72 inches high by 144 inches wide, a marvel of oil paints on two large canvases. This gargantuan painting commands the space that it’s in, and is extremely hard to miss or ignore. The subject material is both endearing and odd, the former in a serenely unsettling way. It evokes the feeling of both a Midsommar celebration and an old-Hollywood style tornado, with brightly colored sheep whirling around a vine-and-flower covered trellis of sorts in the center. It is both fantastical and mystifying, almost reminiscent of taking too many psychedelics in the country and wandering into a field at the witching hour. It almost seems that the landscape itself has been amalgamated, almost as if all of the shrubbery and flora have been uprooted and placed in this sort of tower, leaving the rest of the land nearly bare, with patches of grass and water left only for necessary sustenance. The heap is adorned with small spring flowers, all in shades of blue with small pops of pink, sweetly surrounded by nightmarishly large lambs in all shades of the rainbow prancing and playing around it. The painting is either adorable or terrifying to some, or maybe even a mix of both, it all depends on how strong or feeble the mind is, and how much it allows for things that are unconventional. Personally, I feel that this piece is a good summary of Chambers as an artist, and proves that she creates meaningful work that is authentic to her and her experience of this life, even though her work can be anxiety-inducing and visually loud and busy at times. I feel that she creates her work to be chaotic on purpose, to show that she is a free thinker and to give the viewer a new perspective or way of seeing. She excels at creating fantasy worlds out of ordinary objects that seem too fantastical to dream up on ones own. On that same note, I also quite enjoyed the fact that she does break all the traditional rules of painting and sculpture, and that she captures things as she sees them, not as she’s expected to. Though her work is as unconventional as it gets, Chambers has bequeathed a certain human understanding to her artwork, shown mostly by her mixed-media assemblages paired with her original paintings as aforementioned, and also by adding imagery that is seen as both comforting and familiar to her intended audiences and buyers. Additionally, Chambers conveys a level of care within her work and process that is not commonly seen amongst other artists. In conjunction with her paintings, many of her found-object assemblages are present in the exhibition as well, adorned with wacky items typically found in the children’s craft section. A personal favorite of mine consisted of a pool noodle, a tabletop punching bag, all of which were held together solely by wires and bits of netting and suspended from a pipe on the ceiling.
Lindy Chambers,QK-67, 2022, Paper mache, foam, string, lights, found objects, 24 x 108 x 28”
Her work is chaotically peaceful, a feeling which is helped by the familiar imagery that is dotted amongst the confusion. By using found objects, she is creating sustainable artwork that aims to find the beauty in things otherwise considered mundane, something that I find to be important with the current global state. As eclectic and odd as it is, she displays a wide berth of talent, as evidenced by her other paintings that line the few walls of Women & Their Work. The arrangement of the paintings doesn’t seem to go any particular way, mixing her older and younger works in a truly blended fashion. The lack of captioning, again, takes away the context of her work, something which left me wondering which paintings were created until I could consult the pamphlet. Included is also a map with numbers denoting the location of each piece by number, with the corresponding one found (with its respective price) on the left inner sleeve. This constant practice of reading and using directional skills was disorienting to me, and took away from the experience for me. It was also a bit difficult to determine which artworks were where in correspondence to the map.
Lindy Chambers, I Used to Be Somebody (Left) and Give Me One Reason (Right) , 2016, Oil on Canvas, 36” x 36” and 36” x 46”
Conversely, much of her work shown strays away from the funky, fun bright vibe and turns cynical and industrial. Brightness still exists in this part of the world, but is broken up by images of chains, metalwork, pieces of brick, and nails. It is the construction site of the psychedelic city, the foundation that Chambers’ creativity rests upon. These two paintings come a bit shockingly compared to the others though, and they are sequestered to a blank white wall where they are shown solely by themselves. It’s almost as if they are an afterthought and just stuck in there to represent the breadth and versatility of her artistic talent.
All in all, Lindy Chambers, Then and Now is a fun, quaint experience that invites the mind to run free for a little while, and allows it to view the chaos of everyday life in a new way. There was definitely not a shortage of things to talk about on the 40-minute drive home, and the work that I saw still makes me wonder and think about how I let the outside world affect my own creative process as an artist. As I mentioned before, the display and amalgamation of her work is very disorienting and definitely out of the box, something which bamboozles and inspires me. Chambers sees the world through kaleidoscope glasses, with prisms and rainbows touching everything that she looks at. This definitely translates into her artistic practice, and I am so grateful that she has shared her colorful brain with the world. I also was a huge fan of the gallery space, and resonated with its mission. Women & Their Work is a nonprofit organization in Austin that brings contemporary art straight into the community. They solely showcase art created by women that live and work in Texas, as well as across the United States. They have been open to the Greater Austin Area for the past 45 years, and also offer educational programs to youth and adults alike. I feel that it is important that artwork of this caliber is placed in a space like this, where it is allowed to truly shine, and is given a specific and intentional place there. That is an important thing for me as a viewer, and I feel that Then and Now has truly filled that role. The simplicity and cleanliness that the building gives allows her artwork to truly pop and shine, and it definitely achieves a transportative feeling.