There’s a certain fog that rolls in when face-to-face with art. That nebulous question, which ponders if it’s life that imitates art or art that imitates life, always seems to arise in the thick of mid-exhibit contemplation. Those with a keen eye (and a well-cultivated cultural rolodex) know it’s a bit of both. And yet, for all the art that portrays the daily through the dazzling, and the countless attempts to emulate their splendor IRL, you needn’t even leave your home to espy the mirroring of life and art. Some examples linger in the most unanticipated spaces, with that of an armoire’s drawer not a bad place to start.
Denim, while not traditionally recognized as an artistic medium, holds just as much potential as those celebrated in stately museum halls. Jeans brought with their stylish ease irreversible paradigm shifts in both life and art. Worthy of a neat 12-point, sans-serif description on a white wall? Arguably so. Whether on the runways during Haute Couture week or on those of city streets, denim finds itself in that eternal discourse between the poetic and the prosaic.
Now, life and art are amid another reform with AG Jeans behind the canvas—that is, on the artists who don their Fall 25 collection. Aptly titled “From Cloth to Canvas,” the autumn assemblage spanning tones from earth to jewel, textures from corduroy to sequin, takes shape as an exploration of the link between an artist, their art, and the space in which they create. Through the experiential lenses of Brooklyn-based culinary content creators Anna Archibald and Kevin Serai, and Santa Barbara-based multi-media artist Petra Cortright, AG’s latest showcase speaks to the creative who revels in coloring outside the lines.
Like the unassuming proximity of a wardrobe, that of a desk nestled in front of a home window, too, offers an overlooked gateway into an unsuspecting gallery. One such desk is that of Petra, who spends those ephemeral gasps of dusk and dawn capturing the lush landscapes of Santa Barbara. Petra finds inspiration in what she dubs “very classical ideas about beauty, subjects that artists have been thinking about for hundreds of years, if not thousands.” And though she defines her study on art and beauty as rooted in the past—doubt not her ability to capture that classicism in a way that jibes well with the digital age.
Observe her palette. No, here you won’t find oils swirling on a wooden kidney. Rather, with the brisk swipe of a stylus, Petra’s palette emerges onscreen, as she prepares to capture twilight horizons in gawk-prompting abstractions—pixels in lieu of paint. Swapping those bygone painters’ whites for AG’s sharp, wide-legged denim in rich, dark tones, she doesn’t just flip the script on what a painter should be and look like; she writes her own.
Paralleling Petra’s knack for transmutation, that of Anna and Kevin’s turns a day in the kitchen into an exhibition, stimulating some senses past the reach of sight and sound. Over in Brooklyn, they take the culinary arts from outside crowded commercial kitchens and into the most intimate of show spaces: the home. Where paints turn to spices, and paintbrushes become knives, the culinary duo materialize the muses that spin in the carousel of their mind’s eye.
Whether that carousel rotates the aromas of recipes from their hometown of Honolulu or of textures so vivid they warrant a second feel, in those maze-like markets of Chinatown, that’s all up in the air. What anchors these notions’ trek from inspiration to manifestation is the gear they’re crafted with—apparel not excluded. “Personal style for us is about dressing in a way that suits our lifestyle, how we move through our city and our work,” shares Anna.
Challenging form with novel technologies and out-of-the-box practices, AG weaves its own path to sustainable craftsmanship, paving the way for the future, so that creatives can keep on doing what they do best: creating. And if, per se, those artists one day find themselves in that seasonal inspirational rut, a subtle glance down at the leg of one of AG’s creations might just rekindle that spark to keep those creative fires burning.
Click here to discover AG Jeans Fall 25 Collection.
