A musician, a student, an activist, an artist: Jake Elias almost does it all.

By Mia Simpson

When Jake Elias starts a painting, he’s not preoccupied with its aesthetic conclusion. Instead, he focuses on technique by embellishing what he sees emerge through layers of paint and paint thinner.

“I let the art itself kind of lead me,” he said. “I rely a lot on letting the paint flow and letting the images come to fruition.”

See artwork from Elias' Salt Lake City show, playing to an excerpt of "Talk Radio" by Electric Kites.

He illustrates his artistic course on a several-weeks-old painting resting on the wall of his girlfriend’s garage, which doubles as a studio. He points to a small wide orange crescent on a canvas 16-square-feet in size that’s covered top to bottom with a mixture of orange, cream, blue and black. “This could be someone’s face or someone’s butt,” he says. It ended up a butt.

Elias, 20, doesn’t confine himself to painting. In fact, he’s very multi-faceted. He‘s still slightly tweaking a guitar he built from African zebra wood. He can play three instruments: violin, trumpet and guitar. Last December, he debuted a set of paintings in a friend’s law office in Salt Lake City, and he‘s currently working on a Web site to market his art. He has a political edge too. His early paintings were in response to rampant environmental destruction resulting from copper mining in his home state of Utah.

Elias working on his latest painting, still untitled.

In sum, he’s a wood craftsman, a painter, a musician and an activist.

He‘s engaged with something regularly. As an arts and art history major at the University of Oregon, Elias produces artwork for school, and also paints privately.

He’s pursuing his musical interests, which are eclectic and vast. He plays in a friend’s rock band, called Electric Kites, when it’s in town, and he recently applied to a study abroad program to Mali, Africa, next fall to live and work for six weeks as an apprentice for a Malian musical master.

But his creative pursuits aren’t mutually exclusive. They are part of a melting pot and often blend flavors.

“My music is influenced by so many things: jazz, blues, classical…I love Arabic music,” he said. “And I glean a lot of my artistic aesthetic from music.”

Elias’ penchant for artistic creation may be genetic. His mother, a carpenter, once played violin for famous female performers like Diana Ross and The Supremes. His father, also a violinist, plays in the Salt Lake City Symphony and offers lessons at the University of Utah.

At first, Elias followed his parents’ path and played violin. But it didn‘t last. He later tried the trumpet before finally settling on the guitar. Elias said his early restlessness was likely due to a lack of appreciation for the rewards of practice.

Elias playing with Electric Kites at John Henry's in early March 2006.

“I didn’t really understand the joy of playing music then,” he said. “It was just really something I had to come into."

His interest in art bloomed when he and his family took a year-long sabbatical to Piegaro, Italy, during his seventh grade year.

Though school work and local architecture and history, Elias observed and studied Renaissance and pre-Renaissance art, some dating to 300 B.C. Italian culture also nourished his freedom of expression.

“I went from the center of uptight conservatism to one of the most relaxing places in the world,” Elias said. “I felt like I had an independence to open myself to a lot.”

It was in Italy that he started painting, at first focusing on his Italian surroundings through landscapes and urban scenes. His new hobby assumed a social purpose when he returned to Utah and was inspired by the splendor and destruction of the state’s natural habitat.

Elias was touched by the effects of copper mining, which was a huge economic force in the state for much of the 20th century. One mountain range, the Oquirrh Mountains located west of Salt Lake City, was gutted so deeply, Elias says, that the damage can been seen from outer space.

“Initially, my work was overtly environmental,” he said. “I was my artistic ego: I thought I could facilitate this big change.”

Paintings from Elias' Salt Lake City art show.

Elias says his artwork isn’t as confrontational anymore. Since he started college, he has focused more on craftsmanship: how to use the paint, how to mix the colors and how to use the brush. But he still has strong standards about the spirit of his work.

“There should be something more driving itself than a pretty picture,” he said. “It must be something original and aesthetic by the collaboration of the artist and the materials.”

And his art continues to make statements.

In his second of two art shows last year, Elias’ paintings inspired by a book called Painted Word by Tom Wolfe.

“It’s almost a cynical look at the artistic ego,” he said. “Ego is very prominent in the art world.”

The product of the theme was bold abstract paintings thick with paint and texture. Elias cites one painting that captures the concept best: it's a man, painted in a dramatic mixture of browns, blues and reds, vainly exhibiting his own painting, which appears transparent and is bleeding white paint.

He said the show was well received and somewhat lucrative.

“It was nice to earn a few dollars,” he said. “I definitely want to get myself out there and show myself to the contemporary art community.”

Elias hopes to make art his livelihood, though he expects to rely on his second major, art history, for paychecks after school.

“The art world and art history serve each other and serve my financial future as well,” he said, laughing. “I’d really like to teach art, and I’d really like to help others produce art so there’s more of it. It’s good for the world.”