A macrame craftsman finds beauty in the unexpected, turning utilitarian rope and marine detritus into magnificent works of art.
By Ashley Breeding
It’s early morning and Jim Olarte is crouched at the foot of a worktable in his Glenneyre Street studio. Ambient music from the “Blade Runner 2049” soundtrack contrasts with the cheerful solstice sun spilling through windows on all sides of the cedar-shake cottage. Smoke from nag champa incense—thought to clear negative energy—sends notes of sandalwood into the air as it falls onto a mound of ashes accumulated over years.
Olarte, a macrame craftsman, tugs steadily at 60 feet of braided white cotton rope after knotting it around a thick core of three Manila hemp lines. A mess of excess rope falls at his feet; across the table, an intricate corkscrew pattern, connected at the top to a square-knot strand with inverse colors, emerges as a work of art.
“We’re building 12 feet, three-quarters of an inch at a time,” says Olarte, who wears khaki board shorts and an off-black T-shirt with an orange Tom of Finland bandanna poking out from the collar. He loops the braided rope around the Manila core once again, forming a “4,” then pulls it under and through.
“[It’s] a universe of knots,” he says. “These individual components together create this beautiful symphony.”
Olarte rarely uses the word “I,” but instead humbly says “we,” referring to design partner Cooper Root. They can each create a 15- to 20-foot-long piece in about eight hours if they knot continuously. “It’s meditative,” Olarte says.
This particular composition is just a sample, but a web of other installations—some commissioned by big clients—dangle throughout the studio like a kelp forest. Root is finishing a vertical square-knot panel, 6 feet long by 4.5 feet wide, that drops from ceiling hooks. It’s one of four panels they’re making for a restaurant in Monterey.
In the distance, sketches and renderings are tacked to a wall. Spools of nautical rope, in both neutrals and colors that mimic varying depths of the sea, clutter the floor. Some rope was purchased by Olarte; others he and Root found washed up from shipwrecked boats.
Focusing primarily on large-scale projects, Olarte says, he and Root conceive and create macrame art for several commercial and residential interior designers in Orange County, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and beyond. Locally, you’ll find installations at Bluebird Mercantile, Laguna Coffee Co., both Laguna Supply stores, A’Maree’s in Newport Beach, and Lido House hotel in Newport, where their black and Manila knots stretch three stories high.
No two projects are the same. “We don’t like to repeat,” Olarte says. “We want every client to have their own distinctive look.” But one similarity is that most components feature a continuous piece of line. “We don’t cut rope. You can see where the piece started and where it ends,” he adds. “There is something Zen about a piece that’s made from just one piece of rope.”
Shaped by the Surf Industry
Olarte was introduced to his craft as a child when his mom asked him to macrame plant hangers. “I’m a good son, you know, so I learned how to make them,” he chuckles. He made more and started selling at craft fairs, but macrame as an art form—a career—wouldn’t come until years later.
Growing up in Wilmington, a suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles, Olarte also lived in Lahaina, Maui, and a few other places before settling in Laguna Beach in the 1970s. He’d frequently visited since high school to surf and attend Sawdust Arts Festival, finding that the town’s “all-around vibe was really beautiful,” he says.
In the early 1980s, he and a partner curated coveted mid century vintage pieces for Locals Only, a boutique clothing store carrying items like quality 1940s gabardine Hawaiian shirts. When it closed more than two decades later, Olarte found a career as a successful prop stylist for surf-industry brands like Stüssy, Quiksilver and Gotcha. His connections serendipitously nudged him toward his future calling.
“Don’t you know how to do macrame?” The question came during a Roxy photo shoot from an art director who wanted a bohemian backdrop woven with driftwood and seashells.
“I made it 12 feet by 7 feet—big,” Olarte emphasizes. “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, here it is. … Here’s my new chapter.’ ”
Modern surf-inspired brands—including Laguna-based Roark, and Outerknown, co-founded by legendary surfer Kelly Slater and renowned designer John Moore—are now among the high-profile clients commissioning Olarte’s elaborate work to enhance their retail spaces across the globe.
A New Way of Seeing
Olarte’s studio illustrates a robust oeuvre that predates macrame. Interspersed with knotted nautical rope in all its colors are mobiles and wall-mounted 3D sculptures assembled from copper armature and found fiberglass.
He likes to walk the beach and comb rock outcroppings in Laguna and neighboring towns, where broken down hulls, buried by the tide, wash up. In fact, Olarte walks everywhere from his bungalow in Woods Cove. “It’s really opened my eyes,” he says. “You see things at a different level when you’re not in a car. … I zone out, pay attention to the environment. I [notice] the cycle of flowers. I see ‘trash’ on the beach [and] pick it up.
“The [fiberglass pieces] are just the way I found them. … I don’t shape any,” the artist says. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
Substantial collections of remnants from the natural world—fragmented cowries and abalone and chitons—amass in glass jars and beakers. “It’s minuscule,” Olarte says, holding up a purple edge of a shell. “But when you have 1,000 or 10,000 of them, it’s a statement.”
There are also bleached bones, lead sinkers, Hot Wheels toy cars and other beach debris, either gathered en masse or awaiting artistic experimentation—or maybe not. “I don’t collect for the sake of collecting,” he points out. “But I’m a hunter-gatherer person. That gene is in me.”
Rocks and stones and driftwood, some artistically wrapped in leather cord, form an organized display on an aluminum table. Among them, a linen-bound edition of “Surf Shacks” published by Gestalten opens to a spread featuring Olarte at home. The book was a project of Ventura’s Indoek gallery, where both Olarte and Root last year exhibited their work in “Found,” a show supported by Outerknown.
It’s also where they first connected with Moore. A “Found” marketing poster hangs on a wall; nearby, so does an oil portrait of Olarte painted by local multimedia artist Jorg Dubin. Scattered between are miscellaneous mementos of life experiences, inspiration and a multicolored macrame panel made from salvaged copper wire. Somehow, they all weave together like his macrame rope pieces, tying parts of his past to his present in one interconnected web.
