John Chamberlain #3

Chamberlain’s Studio, 10th Street, Sarasota. (bron en foto: Eric Seibert)
"....
John’s years in Sarasota were the most productive of his life. With an enormous space to create in—the yellow building was originally a boat-building facility—he made work that became larger and larger.
....
What he chose was to make the property on 10th Street, which at the time was a two-lane shell road, both his studio and his home. Gradually, he bought most of the lots surrounding his property. He was forever getting in fights with the city commission over an alley that ran through them. John wanted to close it off. Mayor Fredd Atkins said it had to remain open for emergency vehicles. The city finally won, but only after years of scheming on both sides.

After he moved off the boat, John slept in a quiet, womb-like room in the office area of the studio. The studio was 18,000 square feet, an enormous space made of corrugated iron with 30-foot ceilings and skylights. He often left the big sliding doors, which faced the street, wide open, and locals driving by could look over and see one of the country’s most acclaimed artists at work. The size and scale of the building enabled him to create much larger and more complex pieces than he ever had before. Inspired by the tropical landscape, he also experimented with color, adding explosive patterns and hues to his sculptures. “Sarasota influenced my colors, as though I invented a fourth primary color,” he once said.
....
A late sleeper, John would appear around 11 a.m., and he and Heidi would usually go out for a late breakfast or early lunch. They would discuss what needed to be done that day, and what was going on at the studio, where there were often eight to 10 people working. “Heidi set him straight,” Scott Senior says. “She made it so he could really start cranking out art.”

There were two distinct areas in the studio, based on where the air conditioning stopped. In the air-conditioned area on the southwest side, the “office group” toiled with administrative issues and paperwork. In the large, open space of the former boat factory (and later a rug remnant warehouse), the “studio group” assembled the sculptures. “It’s all in the fit,” was a frequently heard expression. The key was not to crush the metal right, but to assemble the pieces together in just the right way. This was John’s job. His assistants prepared the raw material, but it was John who did the assembling. That’s where the art came in.

The studio group was all men. It included Scott Senior; Jack Crawford, a welder; Duncan, John’s son, who would quietly keep things organized; and assorted characters who would appear and start helping out and sometimes stay around for years, like Carl Lamplighter, better known as Dawgfish.
....
The rhythm of the studio was ruled by two of John’s contradictory traits: his short attention span and his tendency to sit and watch. “He could watch things for hours,” Brad recalls. There were often three or four TV sets on, but something more mundane might catch his attention. Brad remembers John watching someone type for what seemed like hours on end. He thinks John spent this time to come up with new ideas.

On the other hand, “If John had one thing going,” Scott Senior recalls, “he had five in the fire.” He was always experimenting—with paper, plastic—“anything he could crush.”
....
Around 1991 John decided it was time to expand operations.

The first thing he did was to renovate the old house that sat on one of his newly acquired lots. He hired architect Yehuda Inbar to add a second story to the wooden structure. The result was a roomy, elegantly rustic loft hidden away in the trees yet right in the middle of town. What seemed like the perfect move at the time, though, turned out to be the beginning of the end.

Two groups had evolved at the Chamberlain studio, and the addition of the new house began to separate them. Increasingly, there was the house group, doing business in an airy, flower-filled environment, paired off against the rough-and-tumble crew in the workspace. The constant interaction that once had united everyone disappeared, and a new mood took over, one of suspicion and wondering exactly what the other group was up to. Then came the break-in.

John’s property had always been in a rough part of town. There were crack houses to the north, and homeless people often wandered the streets. At first the wacky group of artists fit right in. Prostitutes would come to the door, curious about what was going on in this strange building, and feral cats strolled across the property. Neighbors heard stories about the famous artist and the incredible value of the art that was just over the chain-link fence.

One night the inevitable happened. Two young men broke into the house while John and Josa were there, tying them up and demanding money. John was pistol-whipped and ended up at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

Suddenly, the happy-go-lucky atmosphere vanished. Barbed wire was added to the fences and a pair of Rottweilers were now on patrol. The men in the studio stopped visiting the house. With the fierce dogs and fences, it was too much of an effort. John’s confidence in the safety of his home and studio was shattered.
....
When John began seeing Prudence Fairweather, the longtime assistant of artist Dan Flavin, his life took a new and final turn. Like some of the other women in his life, Prudence helped John subdue his demons. She encouraged him to stop drinking, she took care of him after a serious heart attack (followed by triple bypass surgery), and she also made it clear she wasn’t interested in staying in Sarasota; her focus was the more fashionable world of New York art dealers and the Long Island haunts of East Hampton, where John had purchased Elaine de Kooning’s guest house. When they married in 1996, John’s burst of Sarasota creativity came to an end. He created a new workplace close to their new Shelter Island home, where he lived with Prudence until his death at 84 on Dec. 21, 2011.
....
The 10th Street studio still stands, as does the house. They have been on the market for years, but various zoning restrictions make them a hard sell. The bright-yellow paint is fading, and vines are growing over the old wooden house in a way that John would have found exciting, an enormous sculpture created by nature.

Inside the studio it’s tantalizingly easy to picture the old days. Stacks of bumpers dot the vast cement floor, and everywhere are old tools, work tables, even some half-completed sculptures.

In the office area, yellowing posters and letters are still tacked to the walls; there’s the kitchen with its midnight blue refrigerator, where Josa cooked meals for John, and in the next room, Heidi’s old desk, still cluttered with paperwork and dusty telephones. On the floor sits an electric typewriter, probably the one John liked to watch in action.
...." (bron: Sarasota Magazine, tekst: Robert Plunket)