MY CUP RUNETH OVER: A RANT

Hello, hello!

Good morning and happy July!

Sometimes I sit down to write a newsletter and I know exactly what I want to share with you. Other times, it feels like I’ve never written a single word or had a single thought of my own, ever. Rarely is there an in-between and often, when I know exactly what I want to share, I second guess myself. Not because the thought is not worthy of being shared, but because I ask m — is this the place to share that?

Then, in a much wiser voice, I ask — if this is not the place, your own personal newsletter that people have subscribed to and can unsubscribe to at any moment, then where is the place?

This hesitancy to share is rooted in these (boring) ideas of how a business should interact with their clientele (yuck! I really hated writing that sentence). In part, this newsletter is a tool to help me sell what I make. So my brain gets all capitalist about it and wants to create a very palatable version of who I am and what I do. But, in a much bigger way, this newsletter is a tool to help me connect - with you! My social media presence is abysmal (in a good way) and I so rarely attend in-person markets these days. So, this is where I get to share. I want to give myself permission to share authentically without the veil of palatability. I don’t really know what that will look like, because I do feel authentic in my newsletters, but maybe I just needed to say it out loud so that little bit of second-guessing can lay to rest.

Anywho, now that we got that out of the way, what I really want to write about this morning is A.I (gross). I hate it. My cup runneth over with an A.I slop fueled fiery rage. Actually, what I really want to talk about are the tomatillos growing in my garden. My first ever tomatillo harvest. Absolutely thrilling! But, then I sit down at my computer and Facebook sends me a message with images of MY art that I’ve posted on MY feed that it ran through it’s generative A.I software.

It sent three images of my art, each altered in a different style, in a very nonchalant ‘look at this cool thing we did with your art, want to share it?’ kinda way. It was garbage. It made my watercolor paintings look ‘realistic’ yet somehow fake and soulless. It was nonconsensual. It was theft. And this is just one instance of millions of instances where art and intellectual property are being pilfered, debased and sold back to us with zero permission, credit or repercussions

I see so many artists speaking up about this and it’s truly inspiring. Ironically, it feels like it is pushing artists to go even harder towards their analogue pursuits. I just wonder whose voice is getting lost to the artificial overlords.

Imagine if Frida Kahlo put her paintbrush down and asked ChatGPT to help her process her pain and grief.

Imagine if Mary Oliver asked GROK to “write me a poem about yearning; include references to the natural world.”

That is what is happening, right now. We are handing over the process — the ache, the toil, the devotion — to a machine. The human experience is the process of being. Not the product. As an audience, we get to experience what Frida and Mary produced, only because they went through the process.

I find myself on this daily journey of worry, fear, anger, hope, grief, inspiration, then back around again, when I think about A.I and our future.  The best I can do is share those feelings with as many humans as I can. I made some art on the topic last weekend that I shared on my IG feed. I can (and will) rant about this forever, but I’ll take the rest of my thoughts elsewhere, for now.

• If you stay subscribed to this email just to be reminded to order more Render, that is perfect! Chef kiss! (Make sure to actually open the email or it will eventually get filtered into your spam folder).

• If you stay subscribed to get a little glimpse into my world, I am delighted to be in your inbox.

• If you actually read to the bottom of any newsletter, I am genuinely impressed — please don’t tell me how many typos you found, I will just curl up like a potato bug and roll away.

Thank you for being here and for letting me take up space in your inbox. I leave you with the never-artificial words of Mary Oliver:

It is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in the broken world.