North Park Festival of the Arts
This week, we’re featuring one of Jarman’s untitled collages on our cover and focusing on his career as an artist whose work takes many different shapes and forms.
“I’m just now starting to show and get everything going,” says Jarman, opening the door to his small studio Downtown space at the Broker’s Building. “This is the space where the 2-D stuff mainly goes on.”
Tiny scraps of paper are scattered across the floor. He has a bigger drawing of shoes and upward pointing arrows on one wall, and his newest work—the collages—are framed and spread around the room. There’s a roll of cloth tucked away in the corner.
The collages are Jarman’s current obsession. And like the big drawing on his wall, most of the new pieces include images of shoes, shoelaces or ribbons. When I ask him to tell me the story behind the work, he takes a deep breath and launches into an explanation that’s at times clear (he’s extremely knowledgeable about art history) and at other times confusing (he’s an experimental, conceptual artist at heart).
In short, Jarman says, he’s commenting on the idea that people can “pull themselves up by their bootstrap”—the belief that if a person works hard enough, she or he can overcome poverty and other socioeconomic situations that others claim are unjust or unfair. He’s raising the idea, but he’s not telling you exactly what he thinks.
“I really want to approach making artwork as a sociologist and an anthropologist,” he says, citing the influence of his mother, who works at a nonprofit charity. “I think I am trying to talk about issues, problems and things that exist, but I refrain as much as possible about making a direct comment on them.”
Jarman uses that basic approach in most of his work, which includes installations and performance pieces, too. Earlier this year, he built an installation using cardboard boxes and blankets that became a visual representation of the various poverty levels across the U.S.
Unrolling the cloth in the corner of the room, Jarman explains that his next installation / performance piece will be using found cloth, washed then sewn together to create a giant blanket that he plans to unroll across an entire city block.
“We’ll invite the community to come together and talk and eat,” he says. “It’ll be one big picnic blanket.”
