Collaborations

A creative, multi-hyphenate who sings, whistles, practices dance and makes drawings on paper, Denevan enjoys collaborating with artists including photographers, fashion designers, architects, recording artists and dancers.

FORM Arcosanti
Arcosanti, AZ, 4-6 October 2024
In 2024, Jim created his third, large-scale land art installation for FORM Arcosanti, the hyper-intimate music festival in Arcosanti, Arizona, where Paolo Soleri sought to create an experimental urban laboratory for design, community, and environmental accountability in the 70s. In blistering temperatures that reached 108 degrees, Jim and the studio team painted the earth with clay, finalizing the 360’ diameter composition just as guests arrived for the festival. A metamorphic, cacaphony of colorful tents punctuated the landscape as guests set up their dwellings in response to the composition.
See Me: A Global Concert with Yo-Yo Ma for the Davos Agenda
Crane Beach, MA, 21 January 2021
For the virtual "See Me: A Global Concert" performed for the World Economic Forum and Davos Agenda, Denevan drew a series of lines and circles inspired by neural networks that was hundreds of feet long at Crane Beach in Ipswich, MA while Yo-Yo Ma played Bach #2 in D minor for cello.
Jacob Jonas The Company and Jim Denevan
Sepulveda Dam, Los Angeles, CA, 7 October 2021
At the Sepulveda Dam in Los Angeles, using mops and buckets of water, Denevan made a radial design on the concrete, transforming the space between the semi-circular Outstanding in the Field dinner table and the movie screen set up for the premiere screeniung of "Man in the Field: the Life and Art of Jim Denevan." Jacob Jonas The Company, a creative dance studio that advances human narratives through the creation of socially relevant works, performed as the artwork evaporated beneath them,
Faena Art, Miami Art Week
Miami Beach, FL 1 December 2015
During Miami Art Week 2015, Jim Denevan's sand and light installation, "Solar Light Geometry" evoked themes of sacred geometry through a blend of performance and land art. Denevan transformed the terrain of Faena Beach into a delicate, immersive artwork that served as a meditative reflection on the fragile beauty of the natural world by day, and turned the signature property into a striking beacon by night. The light-rimmed mandala traced the passage of time, capturing the movement of the sun and sand to subtly reference natural forces and humanity's impact on our ecologies and landscapes.
MoMA PS1 International and National Projects
Long Island City, New York, 24 June-24 September 2007
In MoMA PS1’s International and National Projects Summer 2007 exhibition, organized by Neville Wakefield, Jim Denevan’s sand drawings on beaches at low tide spoke to the temporary effects of presence and subsequent erasure. Made without the aid of measuring tools, he marked the beach with the precision of process and the miles of walking and raking that evoke his geometric expressions. “When I’m doing a drawing,” the artist says, “I’m personifying a place that is empty. A place that is unmarked.”

Hovering high in the cliffs above, Ari Marcopoulos observed the transient effects of light and water, recording the progress of Denevan’s freehand labors as they developed in the time and space between the flow and ebb of the tides. With communication between the two collaborators reduced to gestures, the activity of making and observing was scored only by the sound of wind and waves.