The Chambers Project is quietly tucked in an unassuming warehouse on Main Street in Grass Valley, California. If you passed it in the daytime, you might not look twice. But when you pass it on an event night — when colorful rays of sacred geometric patterns wash across the walls and illuminate the building as if it were the epicenter of the Northern Lights — you can feel the presence of magic inside.

Brian Chambers is the founder of the Chambers Project and a manic collector of many things since childhood. It started when he was young with Smurf memorabilia, then baseball cards, comic books, and concert posters. But nothing has taken hold quite like psychedelic art. He’s been collecting it since the ‘90s and has been putting on shows since roughly 2009. The Chambers Project is just the latest in a near-lifelong series of endeavors he has engaged in to showcase, bolster, and orchestrate the creation of psychedelic artworks so as to preserve its history and prove to the modern art world that this particular means of expression is just as legitimate as anything on display in the MOMA.

“Well, I guess I've kind of been a collector my entire life,” Chambers told DoubleBlind in an interview. “Once I got into high school and started going to concerts, [I started collecting] concert posters. And then once I discovered the psychedelic side of life, my interest shifted to psychedelic art. I read ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ in ‘95 as a Sophomore. That had a serious, profound effect on me and the way I was living at the time.”

Profound is an understatement, because not only did that initial read of “Fear and Loathing” spark Chamber’s interest in psychedelic art, it resulted in one of the most prolific collections of Ralph Steadman art and Hunter S. Thompson momentos on display anywhere in the world (other than Owl Farm, Thompson’s historic home in Woody Creek, Colorado, which is now a museum of sorts). In 2015, Chambers teamed up with Steadman to make giant bronze statues of the vintage Dr. Gonzo character. After appearing in the press with Steadman — one of the leading figures of counterculture art, thanks to his work in “Fear and Loathing” — Chambers started getting calls from the depths of the Gonzo ether, one of which was in regard to the original RollingStone prints of the “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” series from 1971.

“I immediately hung up the phone, and I called Ralph, and I was just like, ‘dude, you'll never believe what just happened. Will you please gimme your blessing to attack this shit?’” Chambers said. “I had to scrape together a million bucks and run it through the bank, and it was this whole fucking shit show. But I did it.”

Chambers also scraped together multiple pieces from the “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail” ‘72 series, and tons of relics from Hunter Thompson’s life and times, all of which are on display at the Chambers Project alongside some deeply hallucinatory artworks by Ralph Steadman that, personally, I’ve been drooling over for years.

DoubleBlind previously attended a Grateful Dead retrospective hosted at the Chambers Project and reported that Chambers was on acid (his self-professed psychedelic of choice) in his high school science class one day when his teacher pointed to an Alex Grey poster on the wall and told the class it was inspired by LSD. So began his lifelong hunt for psychedelic artwork. Of course, once you get locked into a serious psychedelic art collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. (Yes, that’s a “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” reference for those of you living under a Gonzoless rock). 

Since the late ‘90s, Chambers has worked to amass one of — if not the — world’s most comprehensive art collections by psychedelic and counterculture artists, including Ralph Steadman, Stanley Mouse, Mars-1, Roger Dean, Rick Griffin, and countless others. His fiendish hunt for psychedelic art culminated in 2009, when Chambers began commissioning live collaborations between Damon Soule, Mars-1, Oliver Vernon, David Choong Lee, Nome Edonna, Doze Green, and Alex Grey, who collectively became known as the “Furtherrr Collective.” It was around that time Chambers realized he had a thirst for putting titans of psychedelic art in the same room just to bear witness to what unfolds.

“When you get a bunch of magicians together in one room, magic inevitably happens,” Chambers said. “I just love getting talented people together in an atmosphere where it allows others to experience the creative process. I like to make world-class art accessible and allow people to meet these global superstars and to ask them questions and to watch them work and to learn from them.”

The Chambers Project began in Nevada City in 2020, just before COVID happened, in a much smaller space than it occupies today in Grass Valley. Chambers said that after the lockdowns ended, he decided to go full force and dedicate his painstakingly developed network of artists, money, and time to giving psychedelic art a proper home.

“I went from an 800 square foot gallery to an 8,000 square foot gallery and just decided that I was fully committed to my local area and community, and that I was just gonna double down,” Chambers said.  And I was just gonna do shit on such a high level that people would travel to see it.”

Needless to say, it worked. Grass Valley has become something of a mecca for artists, weed growers, and hippies over the years (I like to joke that when cannabis went legal, everyone in Humboldt County packed up and moved to Grass Valley), and the Chambers Project has certainly added to the draw for denizens of counterculture, lovers of substances, and servants of psychedelia. Their events attract crowds from all over the world. Just at the Grateful Dead 60-year retrospective, Chambers said they had attendees hailing from five continents (that he knew of).

When you enter the gallery, there’s no question why crowds flock to the space for events. Chambers has spent millions of dollars on his collection, and it shows in some of the meticulously curated works on display. When it comes to his personal taste in art, Chambers is far more thoughtful than your typical acid head who gets transfixed at the mere sight of a changing traffic light.

“I kind of like it looser, non-symmetrical and non-representational. I like to wonder what it is that I'm looking at,” Chambers said. “Clearly, trying to represent a certain thought or experience is less interesting to me than these more abstract sci-fi sort of landscapy things that these guys create. You never get bored of looking at them.”

Chambers is truly using all his resources and skills to hold psychedelic art right up to the faces of the traditional art world as if to say, fuck you, we’re here to stay. Having collected psychedelic art for 30 years is a true testament to that, as well as his current work with the Psychedelic Arts and Culture Trust (PACT)

PACT is a 501(c)3 non-profit founded by Chambers in late 2023 with a stated mission of honoring the past, celebrating the present, and shaping the future. PACT offers regular art exhibitions through the Chambers Project gallery, including most recently a 60-year Grateful Dead retrospective. They offer mentorships for aspiring psychedelic artists, workshops to hone artistic crafts like glass blowing and painting, panel discussions, lectures, and anything else to bring the Grass Valley community and beyond together to get creative and make more magic. 

“I wanted to really show what was possible and what's most interesting to me, and the direction that I would like to go in the future. And that's curating major retrospectives with a serious historical context behind them,” Chambers said. “We're stating it clearly. The psychedelic art movement is happening right now.”

Historically, psychedelic art has been marginalized and scoffed at by the traditional art world. But thanks in part to the work of Brian Chambers and the Chambers Project, the works of these legends are gaining more traction and respect in circles that previously scorned their very existence. This can likely also be attributed to the public shift in approval toward the use of psychedelic substances. Of course, on both fronts, there’s much more work still to be done.

“There's never been a more exciting moment in the history of psychedelic art,” Chambers said.  “It's happening right now, and as psychedelics shift and the public's perception of them moves, so too will the winds by which people want to see and experience psychedelic art.”

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