After receiving a BA in art education at Western Michigan University, Jim Growden moved to San Francisco in 1969 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute where he received an MFA in 1972. In graduate school, he was an exchange student in Japan, and has since traveled to Europe, Greece, and Egypt. Being particularly interested in tools and machinery both ancient and modern, he made a point of going to anthropological, scientific and maritime museums as well as visiting the industrial/maritime areas wherever he traveled.
His early work was figurative and cast in bronze. In 1971, he moved to a studio on the San Francisco waterfront, which greatly influenced the development of his work. The tools used in the maritime industry in proximity to the studio were a great source of inspiration and he captured the ruggedness of forms and textures of these objects. Moving from a literal to a more abstract interpretation, he later began working mostly with wood, welded metal, and occasionally used canvas, rope, rubber, and cement. Often, the raw materials were simply discarded objects, and by welding and woodworking, the material becomes transformed into an entirely new thing.
Growden does not work from drawings or a preconceived idea, but rather in a kind of dialogue with the materials, never knowing what will turn out when he begins.
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