Jim Denevan

United States of America

Bio

Jim Denevan (born 1961) is an American chef and land artist based in Santa Cruz, California. Denevan works with natural materials to create massive scale drawings in sand, ice, and soil that are then erased by waves and weather. His sculptures are not placed in the landscape, rather, the landscape is the means of their creation. These drawings range in scale from smaller beach compositions to large scale land works the size of a city, including the record-breaking world’s largest artwork on Lake Baikal.

Documentation of Denevan’s work has been exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, MoMA/PS1, The Museum of Arts and Design, Parrish Art Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, and Laguna Art Museum. Live performances of drawings for the public were included in exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2005. His work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, GQ, Elle, The Surfers Journal, Outside, Wired U.K. and many other national and international publications.

Jim Denevan made his Canadian debut with a sand drawing created for the 2009 – 2011 Vancouver Biennale and returned in 2019 to set the table for over 300 people as part of the Outstanding in the Field series. Denevan is the founder of Outstanding in the Field, a traveling dinner series that take place in fields, farms, and countless other sites around the world.

_