John Chamberlain

The last weeks of 2011 saw the passing of the sculptor John Chamberlain, whose welded sculptures made from scrap parts of automobiles never fail to seduce with their world-weary abraded surfaces and paint colors that speak of long useful lives spent going and going more, until going no more. I think when I first saw Chamberlain's work as an art student, I may have romanticized the idea of the possible back-story of a high-speed car smash-up; " Leader Of The Pack " kind of stuff. These images from a recent show had me jazzed more by the fluidity of shapes in space, almost brushstroke-like in many instances. And this time I was the one traveling: forward, backward, around the perimeter, looking into the nooks and crannies, then doing the step-out and reverse to get the big picture again. Just the way I like to experience sculpture.