Meet Jim Arendt | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jim Arendt and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jim, as a parent, what have you done for you children that you feel has had the most significant impact?
Being an artist is all encompassing and so my children have had to come along for the ride. I’m at my best as a parent when my partner reminds me to stop and go for a walk with them, or read a bedtime story, or to push them on the tire swing. Mostly, I try to involve them in the work. They model for me, are a source of inspiration, or help out around the studio so we can spend time together. I’ve tried to instill that they’re part of our life rather than and appendage to it, so sometimes we dress in fancy clothes and go to art openings and talk to adults. Our children don’t have a choice about whether their parents are both artists, and so they have to sit at the kitchen table and listen to us talk about artistic work. They are involved or present while we discuss the content of our work. They see us read and research then engage in those activities themselves. They make and have ownership over the objects they surround themselves with. We instill a love of curiosity and a permissiveness to explore that I hope will serve them well in the years ahead. My parenting philosophy has always been that if I do my job right, they will need me less and less.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I make portraits in denim of my logical and biological family and use them to model my worries and desires from donated and reclaimed denim. For me, representation is still a form of magical power. Even though I know how all the tricks work, I never tire of watching someone appear from bits of wrangler blue and acid-wash white.

My practice is rooted in understanding how we relate to labor. I grew up outside Flint, MI during the farm crisis and of plant closures and of the early 1980’s. My close proximity to the manufacturing and agrarian landscapes of America, as well as the dramatic shifts in both of those sectors of our economy during my lifetime, have led me to continuously pursue an understanding of its people and craft. Making has brought with it an understanding of the complexity of forces that drive our contemporary economy. Through portraiture I try to make the scale and complexity of these shifts intelligible. The cultural practices that unfurl as a result of those relationships taught me strategies for crafting a working life that embraces wholeness and integrity as antidotes to estrangement from objects and one another.

On my way to an active career as an artist, many people held the door open, and now I have the privilege of being a professor of art, a maker of objects, and a philosopher of practice for others. Pursuing art at a young age didn’t seem so crazy when all the safe paths to success were disappearing. My dad would have liked me to be a tradesman and my mom wanted a preacher, so I settled on something in between. I realized how important art was to me when I literally had to beg to be let into classes in middle and high school. My art teachers feed opportunities to me and my mom helped me mail work off work to competitions. I had great professors who always made sure to hire me when they needed odd jobs done which helped me stay in materials. I got in the habit of entering shows on a regular basis, until a single museum curator put faith in me by offering me a solo exhibition and a year to create enough work to populate the space.

Recently, I’ve been toying with the concept that a lot of my success has to do with being on a virtuous cycle. There is an audience of people rooting me on, and whether I am deserving or not, they are invested in my success. This causes me to make more work, (which is sometimes good.) and to exhibit more often, which often leads to people writing about my work and spreading the word that it’s worth exhibiting. This in turn grows the audience for my work, and they’re invested in my success, which causes me to make more work, which leads to more exhibitions, and so on.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I love the outdoors, textiles, and works of art. Britex Fabrics (or any fabric store) is fun to browse and everyone should haul out that old sewing machine and try to make a cool shirt. Visit your favorite Gallery, or taking a special exhibition at the contemporary art museum to see something new. Take a few friends and talk about it afterwards and remember that these are the things that make us human.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I couldn’t do my work without the help of my co-conspirators. A small and dedicated cohort of friends and fellow fiber artists who send me their jeans. Sometimes they’re hand-delivered and neat little stacks, other times they arrive in cardboard boxes from different corners of the country. I’ve always promised to try to give them a life that’s longer and beautiful.

Website: jimarendt.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimarendt/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JimArendt.Art

Image Credits
Scott Dean