Alexandra Fairweather is a director at the John Chamberlain Estate, where she oversees exhibitions, publications, and archival projects for the sculptor who brought abstract expressionism into three dimensions with crushed automobile metal. Chamberlain cavorted at Max’s Kansas City with Judd, Flavin, and the Warhol Factory crowd, and built a 72-foot studio on Shelter Island before his death in 2011. Today, Alexandra (his stepdaughter) and her mother Prudence maintain the estate’s private museum in a converted horse stable — where she recently launched ON THE COUCH, a filmed interview series shot on Chamberlain’s iconic foam couches with guests like Daniel Arsham, Misha Kahn, and Jon Gray of Ghetto Gastro. Here, she talks Marie Kondo, AI workflows, and why Shelter Island is always the answer.

What book have you gifted most?

Assouline's Living with Chamberlain. It shows what it's like to actually live with his work.

Where do you go to find peace?

Shelter Island.

Who is your forever inspo?

John Chamberlain. He was authentic, never boxed in by social norms, and had the courage to rethink what was possible. I carry all of that into my own life.

What's something you bought under $100 that changed your life?

Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Once everything had a place, I had more room to think.

What's the best investment (money, time, habit) you've made?

Being an early adopter of technology, specifically AI. It has completely changed my workflow and created time to explore more creative projects. Chamberlain was also an early adopter of digital image manipulation. In the mid-2000s, he created collaged large-scale prints on canvas composed of his own Widelux photography — stretching, cutting, filtering, and colorizing the images to reshape his world in an entirely new way.

Write us a fortune cookie message.

"It's all in the fit." — John Chamberlain

Follow Alexandra on Instagram and Cosmos.