Jim Denevan

Unexpected art on Land

With artwork using freehand marks drawn on sand, earth or ice and foodwork organizing nomadic outdoor feasts, Jim creates substantial yet temporary places. Places where spectators and participants measure their relation to physical, temporal and seasonal boundaries. Jim's quixotic pursuit balances control/chaos, success/failure and the serious/frivolous. He and his participants and his constructions exists in the weather, are unsheltered and unprotected. They exist or do not exist at the whim of nature.

Over the past 17 years artist Jim Denevan has composed hundreds of unique sand drawings at beach locations in California and around the world. Made freehand with a length of driftwood during the period of low tide, Jim's giant works last only as long as the next high tide.

While still making many drawings on sand, recently Jim has began making enormous drawings on dry or frozen lakes. Composed over several days to weeks, each drawing totals several miles in diameter, the largest artworks ever created. As with Jim's temporary drawings on the beach these artworks also disappear; in the weeks after completion of a work weather arrives, rain, wind, and sun work to erase every trace.

Jim is also the founder and organizer of the long running traveling farm dinner series Outstanding in the Field. Outstanding in the Field is a mobile restaurant without walls. These seasonal farm dinner events are organized as a celebration of place and honor the farmer and other producers of a region. Jim's foodwork is created around the U.S.A and internationally.