SCOTT CHAMBERLIN

SCOTT CHAMBERLIN

“The depiction of the head is the most important part of the body throughout art history. One sees the head depicted more often than the entire figure. It is where the mind resides and it is the center of intellect, thought, memory, understanding, emotional control and more. The representation of the head/face has much potential for the viewer. It is often perceived to be the mirror of the mind. It is where magic and mysteries are located; it is where our imagination resides.

For me the importance of abstraction is in its ability to be evocative in very complicated ways and in very simple, fundamental ways. I am interested in making artwork that is understood or apprehended through involuntary or unconscious urgings, in ways other than through reason or intellect.  I want the response to be more instinctual, to come through the gut more than through the head.  I am trying to make work that presents itself before language forms, before it can be given a name. In this very complex, information-based world, it appears experience or assimilation without language is diminished. In this way, the understanding of the work as a head/face is secondary to how it operates as forms in space, elemental color and shape that is aesthetically complete without it having to be identified as a head only.

The work is exploring the curious space that exists between being somewhat creepy and humorous; intrigued by the sayings, euphemisms, and slang that include the word head. I am interested in the full richness of language; how all of its humor, incredible variety, and exquisite strangeness is revealed, and I have a curiosity about the way gross or repellent things become beauty. In my way of thinking, for the work to be successful, it should be simultaneously odd and elegant, to perhaps reflect an unsettling mixture of strangeness and seductiveness.”  

- Scott Chamberlin

A professor at the University of Colorado, Scott Chamberlin has an MFA from Alfred University, Alfred, New York, and a BA from San Francisco State University. He has been the recipient of numerous honors and fellowships including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; two National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowships; Creative Faculty Fellowships, the University of Colorado at Unitec in Auckland, NZ; The European Ceramic Work Centre in s’-Hertogenbosch, Holland; a Colorado Council on the Arts & Humanities Visual Arts Fellowship; as well as several grants for his continuing topiary projects in northern Portugal. He has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions including the Denver Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art; CU Art Museum University of Colorado, Boulder; Aspen Art Museum; the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, Taipei, Taiwan; Pewabic Pottery, Detroit, Michigan; and other venues in Portugal, Sweden, New Zealand, London, and the Netherlands. Chamberlin is a sought-after visiting professor and artist-in-residence, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the CU Art Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder, International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, New York, Denver Art Museum, Dordrecht Museum, Dordrecht, Holland, Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York, Museum Het Kruithuis / European Ceramic Work Centre, Hertogenbosch, Holland, and Daum Museum, Sedalia, Missouri.