Radical Hope Blooms

It was at least 2 years ago when I digitized a loose collection of my botanical abstract paintings in all kinds of traditional media, and used them for training an artificial intelligence model in Playform. I’ve worked with these images off and on, never really clear on what their outcome would be. Recently, I selected some generations from Playform and blended them in Midjourney, loved what was happening, and then finished them up.

Radical Hope works this way - a trust that a future goodness will exist, despite not knowing how we get to it. 🖤✨

I selected the options available to print these on with a few things in mind - my favorite papers, the acrylic blocks and prints that I’m obsessed with, and some other prints that are more affordable. If you like this series and want to get a print or a few (they look so so good in a grouping!) let me know if I can help you pick out the best options for you.

AI Art School

I’ve started teaching classes about how to use AI in your creative practice! I’m really excited about this, because I want to share the magic that I sensed with AI in my own art practice with other artists, and develop the use of creative AI as a tool for reflective practice for anyone.

I’ll be teaching these first classes with a newly formed AI Art School, and if you’re interested in learning, there are two courses right now - one for fine artists, who already have a body of work, and one for anyone who wants to learn to use AI as a tool for creative expression. These are beginner level courses, so if you’re totally confused, or curious but don’t know where or how to start, these are for you!

The link below will take you to Rebecca Tolk’s website for further information and check out, don’t be alarmed, this is correct! I’m teaching the evening cohort of the AI for Creative Expression course, so click on that sign-up link to learn with me as your guide!

Pinspiration Project

I started taking screenshots of my Pinterest feed a while back. I'm not sure what I was even going to do with them, I just was interested in the way the algorithm shows me things that I like, but also creates some sort of connections between the images it's showing me. A black bird. A tattoo of a bird and berries. A berry cobbler recipe. A lady with short hair. A drapey layered outfit in shades of black. An abstract painting with blotches of purple. There is something similar that the algorithm is picking up on. These connections somehow relate to my taste. What is it? What does it say about me? What can I learn from this information?

I've used Pinterest since it came out, finding it a positive space to explore ideas. Using boards to pin my project inspiration, plan parties, collect quotes, connect with people who liked these niche things, or experienced chronic illness.

For this project, I took the screenshots where I found interesting connections, and I separated the images so that the software doesn't implement the grid form of Pinterest - I'm interested in what happens between the concepts of these images.

I fed these 200+ images to the Playform platform, and am currently waiting to see what happens!

Can machine interpretation give us useful information about ourselves? Will it reflect something of my values back to me? My tastes? My interests? What form will these take? ...