Keeping Up With Jones

Lyons creative grasps worldwide reach with illuminating and innovative art 

By Kalene McCort

For close to 20 years, Andrew “Android” Jones has been infusing the global art scene with his digital paintings of intriguing entities, psychedelic sirens, ram-horned goddesses and mesmerizing third-eyed deities. A longtime participant of Burning Man, Jones’s reach has transcended beyond Black Rock City and onto the walls of The Smithsonian.

From projecting his image of Hindu goddess Kali on New York’s Empire State Building to enlivening the sails of Australia’s Sydney Opera House with a live digital art performance, Jones transforms iconic landmarks into unexpected canvases. Samskara—the immersive 360-degree show featuring his art—allows visitors to embark on a mind-bending journey. The spectacle has taken Turkey by storm and will return to CU Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium this November. 

His otherworldly—layered—work consistently stirs emotions in onlookers. Within the intricate elements that make up other dimensions, portals and shamanic figures are messages of unity, freedom and—above all—love. 

“I’m always kind of the most excited about the beginning of a piece,” says Jones. “I love the initial start of it and the different directions it can go in and kind of building up the foundation of the tools that I’m going to use and the references. Once I can get enough momentum, then there’s a point where the piece clicks and it sort of shows me what direction it’s going in, and that’s always really exciting.”

Jones grew up on the edge of the foothills of Lyons and showed immense artistic promise as a child, earning praise from his preschool teacher for his rare, innate ability. 

“I enjoyed art really early on,” says Jones, who later studied academic drawing, painting and animation at Florida’s Ringling School of Art and Design. “My parents were really enthusiastic to support me with sketchbooks and art supplies. I started getting lessons. I think sometimes we have a certain disposition that we come out of the gates with probably independent of environment or nurturing. I gravitated towards art. I kept drawing. When you get good at something, you kinda keep doing it. After a while, it became a way I could relate and identify with—I became the artist in the class.”

While Jones stays busy traveling the festival circuit and collaborating with fellow visionary artists throughout the country, many of his days are spent clocking hours in his industrial studio in Lyons. Bordered by an automotive repair shop, the large space is filled with plenty of gear, Persian rugs, vintage furniture and even a corner paint area for his three children to explore and play. At his side is puppy Juna, an energetic midnight black Schipperke, who doesn’t hesitate to use her human’s stray work gloves as chew toys. As he creates, he revels in an overhead soundtrack provided by his impressive collection of vinyl that boasts albums by Deep Purple to Steppenwolf. Also in the mix is electronic music artist Random Rab’s “On Magnificence,” for which Jones designed the cover art. 

In addition to this space, Jones has outfitted a semi-truck with an in-vehicle studio, what he refers to as a “command center”—off of Highway 66— where lots of fine tuning is done before projects are completed. 

Although, a fresh space to create—complete with state-of-the-art projection dome— is underway for this visionary. Blueprints have been drafted for a brand new barn studio on his Lyons family farm that will replace the one he devastatingly lost in a fire in January 2023. Decades of work, many unreleased pieces and equipment, were destroyed in last year’s blaze. Out of the ash, Jones sparked a new perspective when financial and emotional support flooded in post disaster. 

“After the fire, I went through almost a complete mythical character arc of my own self-discovery,” Jones says. “It’s easier to not be vulnerable in front of people. It’s easier for me to be vulnerable in front of the easel, by myself, in my studio. I reached out to my community because I had a team of people to support and my family. Every means I had to support myself no longer existed. I didn’t have the luxury of not asking for help, but then to get such an overwhelming amount of support and love that I never in my wildest dreams would have ever considered and realized was lifechanging. These people loved me even though all this work was gone.”

While Jones has called San Francisco, Austin and several other places home, he is always drawn back to the Front Range. A recent commission by cannabis dispensary Boulder Built allowed Jones to pay homage to snow-covered Boulder Flatirons. The first in a series of four, prints of the initial piece speedily sold-out. The second release is a homage to the crimson cliffs of Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre. 

“Sometimes I feel like if I didn’t have any other external factors, or clients or requests, I could be happy just probably doing landscapes,” says Jones, who as a youth relished in exploring the open space near his childhood home. 

One day, Jones would like to see his work projected on the Taj Mahal, but for now the prolific creative—a self-described “enhancer of reality—is satisfied with daily discoveries made while deep in the act of creating. 

“For me it’s about being able to kind of keep diving back into the moment of the creative experience,” Jones says. “I think that’s one of the most special and magical experiences that I can have as a human. When I’m right at the edge of making something, it started from nothing and now there’s a story or these shapes, colors and lines are invoking an emotion that I might have come to that surprised even me—I’m in service to that mystery.”

To learn more, visit androidjones.com and follow on Instagram @android_jones.