Welcome brave explorer.
Your curiosity got the better of you.
(We think that’s a good thing.)
You have entered a virtual vortex. A rabbit hole of meta proportions. A space of playful inquiry, a conceptual pretzel — and an introduction to the art and political philosophy of visual artist Paul Chambers (1951-2012), without whom there would be no Signalcamp or Waterburg Chapel as we know them today.
Paul Chambers in his studio ca. 2009
"Just before dying I had a dream: I was the subject of a painting that entered Heaven after thousands and thousands of years."
— O. Pamuk
Visual Artist Paul Chambers (1951-2012)
was known for his enormously provocative abstract conceptual landscape paintings related to his intense concern for lasting international peace. The colorful abstractions function referentially within a non-ideological but particular political diagram. Recurring subjects include, Advanced Russian Indian Ocean Initiative; Monday Human Sabbath; as well as a series of works containing a proposed solution a road map to peace in the Middle East, which he has printed on postcards and mailed to world leaders.
Chambers was born in Lincolnshire, England — “parliament country!” as he called it, home to the Magna Carta. A graduate of Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, UK (‘73), he completed his MFA at Cornell University (‘77) where he was also a member of the faculty before serving as Head of Art at a private high school in Upstate, NY. From 1992 to 2002, Chambers attended a moldy train station in Ithaca, NY nicknamed ‘Signalcamp,’ which he 'recycled' into a work of living sculpture. In 2002, he ‘recycled’ a 19th century Greek Revival church and the last of the eight bay buggy barns which he restored from a derelict state.
A deeply political creature, a brilliant theorist and lover of beauty, from 2003 until his death in 2012, Chambers focused his project to 'redefine art to include religion.'