Meet Ike Jay | Photographer & Painter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ike Jay and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ike, what matters most to you?
My core artistic values are simple, but deeply important to me as an individual. I think art serves as a connection point between the artist and their community, then as a touchstone for the community to connect beyond what the artist can ever hope to create alone. I believe my role as an artist is to enlighten the most beautiful aspects of my own life, to then share my perceptions with anyone who views my work.

Beauty is simple, universal, has infinite depth, and can be found in every aspect of life. This concept manifests itself best in my film photography, where I strive to meditate with individual moments and capture their most interesting aspects. Whether it is a portrait or landscape or even a product photo for a business client, attention to the way light dances across the subject and how the subject moves enables me to highlight the profound tangibleness of beauty innate in our human experience.

This attention to detail extends even further into my paintings, where I seek to use a simple array of colors to evoke calmness or anxiety through my choices in movement and contrast, observing my own state at the moment of creation and communicating it in a visual language.

Above all, I hope my work acts as the first step for a viewer to engage more fully in their own experience, creating a sense that their perspective can be focused towards the joy of simple observance.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I would better describe myself as a devote than as a professional, in the traditional sense. My art does not currently support me in a monetary sense, though I am happy to take commissions and post work daily for sale. I am instead devoted to creation and the pull I feel to be continually creating works of art. It’s far more impulse & personal nature than profession at this stage in my life.

Art, and my ability to create above all, is a key driving force in my life. I have the perspective that art is a mechanism for healing and connection. I have learned art is an avenue for me to take what I am experiencing and channel it into a medium that brings joy to myself and others. My connection with my own art is important beyond the ability for me to gain monetarily. Eventually, it will support me, undoubtably. But my lesson to learn as a young artist is that of commitment and devotion to myself and my crafts.

My story is that of a young man, with a silly dream that will eventually turn to gold. Painting in his room, to get in touch with his softest aspects and share them with whoever cares to stop and look. Nothing more than another expression of life’s creative force and his own ambition to be known for his ideas or ideals.

My career at this point is largely unwritten, so I just want people to watch and listen so they can see what I am capable of. I have completed a number of projects, but am in highly explorative phase of my creative process where I am working harder to find what is my most marketable & effective form. I dabble across painting, photography, and mixed media work but would like to remain unbound by a particular medium, always seeing the medium as secondary to the expression.

The most recent large project I completed was a photo collection named Borrowed Nostalgia, which includes prints of 35mm film photos I took throughout the course of the 2020 & 2021. The culmination of this project was a photo book that summarized the collection and contained poetry inspired by the photos & journey of collecting them. This was a highly reflective work, that feels to me like an attempt at self portraiture, without being the subject of any of my photos. Instead, I am the hidden subject behind the lens and the true portrait is my perspective, how I direct my gaze.

I am currently in progress on a multimedia project I am dubbing Chaos Magic, where I take prints of my 35mm film shots and use simple lines & colors to enhance the images and bring a little abstraction to the work. My goal with this particular set of works is to explore the interface between concrete reality (the exactness of a photograph) and more abstract truths of experience (represented by the paint or marker), like how our individual perception imbues our reality with added meanings. This project ultimately has the goal of showing a journey from reality too abstraction and back. I will be most excited to share this as a gallery show one day, where the viewer will walk the length of a long wall to physically follow the progression from raw untouched photographs, to multimedia works with the photographs increasingly obscured, to fully abstract works of line & color. I’d like the project to lead each viewer on a walk I feel I have taken, to understanding the malleable nature of personal reality. Put simply, I am attempting to illustrate the relationship between mind and matter.

I’d like above all for my brand to be associated with thoughtful art that builds connection and conversation, through demonstrated thoughtfulness and attention to beautiful details.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
For time in the sun I would absolutely have to take them out to Tourmaline beach in PB. That was the first spot I really started to love when I moved to San Diego. A beach fire and a sunset would definitely be in order.

For a cozy evening in, we’d get take-out from Fortunate Son near my home in North Park. For a nice night out we would absolutely need pasta in Little Italy. Drinks would have to be in Ocean Beach where everyone has one too many, then brunch in La Jolla the next morning to work the hang over out and wander through galleries or the SDMCA.

I’d also need to bring them to my yoga studio in OB for a good flow and a little time to recharge.

I’d need to make Balboa park a priority on the list as well, just to enjoy the gardens and the architecture. This is where I have found myself taking the most photos since I got to the city.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are so many people that I could shout out, I have been blessed with support from great friends. First I must mention Klair Sorosky, as she is the one that recommended me for this publication. She is one of the most talented artists I know and I am blessed to wear some of her work as a tattoo (soon to have many more by her).

Then I have to mention one of my closest friends, Ieke Goodwin. He is a talented musician and jeweler who can be found @iekegoodwin on Instagram. He has always encouraged me to follow my passion and continually create art.

Finally, I would love to shout out my friend Maddie Zahm. She is an excellent singer and writer who has posed the question ‘why not?’ to me many times whenever I express doubt or anxiety regarding my work. I would not be as confident an artist without her & Ieke’s encouragement.

Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/IkeJayArt?ref=profile_header

Instagram: @_ikejay_

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ike-jay-garrett-654157252/

Other: https://borrowednostalgia.wixsite.com/home https://www.tiktok.com/@_ikejay_?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

Image Credits
IMG_7473: Tanner Baisden (Almond Film Co: @almondfilmco on Instagram) IMG_2575: John Wiliams (Freelancer: @johnwilliams_photo on Instagram) All other images are mine