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AI and a Weekend Alone

Welcome back to We’ve Never Been Wrong; a new and exciting explosion of opinion in which two 20-something women attempt to convince their small community of readers that they’ve never been wrong!

This month, Julia engages with Artificial Intelligence to make art. (Bernadette finds this to be a signifier or the end of times but respects Julia’s perhaps less biased and open analysis.) Bernadette refuels during a weekend alone and uncovers a newfound openness at the end of the heatwave.

ARTificial intelligence

So we didn't write an April or May newsletter… our B. Lets just jump right into it. I am back from Italy (as of April 26th) and I got to end my stay there in Venice which remains my favorite place to be. The food, the canals, the people, the views. Nothing beats it. I am endlessly grateful to the people that made those three months so warm and welcoming. I will probably be working the rest of my life to repay their kindness. All the problems I had been putting off for future Julia, however, caught up with me, but I have solved the major ones! I have a place to live for the next year while I am in grad school! My city life begins in August when I will be moving to Boston. I get to move into an apartment and my art studio in the same week. I cannot wait for this journey! I got to take a month off from working and do a serious major deep clean of all my belongings and settle back into life at home. I have had lots of time to read. My formula so far has been to read a fantasy book on my kindle, while also reading a physical non-fiction book, and listening to another fantasy book on audio. I have not taken the time to just sit down and read in a long time and my adorable cat rascal has been climbing into my lap during these moments of stillness. It has been very peaceful. I am also excited to be taking a portrait drawing class this summer. It is the one thing I cannot seem to draw and I hope to change that at least a little bit before embarking on grad school.

Speaking of grad school the creative juices are flowing and I want to make sure I can go into the start of school with lots of great ideas. I was feeling in a bit of a creative rut and I had a few loose concepts (I’m not president yet!), but they needed to be pushed forward more and I just could not get there. After getting to the end of May and still I had not made any art for myself in 2025 I knew I needed to move things along. So I plugged my ideas into AI. I was really skeptical, but I wanted to test AI as a method to push myself just enough to take an idea to the next level where I have a real solid plan for a painting. I used AI (specifically Claude) to bounce some of my ideas off of. I really debated doing this for a while, but I had been sitting on a few different ideas for months with no change in inspiration. The main ideas I was playing with were: if Eve from the Adam and Eve story had a bedroom today what would it look like? How can I combine larger concepts like religious upbringing, or women's rights with interiors? And lastly I have been wanting to get more personal in my art and explore the effects CMT has had on my life.

I will give the briefest explanation of CMT so you can follow along, but I don’t want to bore you. Charcot-Marie-Tooth is a hereditary nerve disease that affects the parts of the body furthest from the central nervous system: hands and feet. Often someone with CMT will have foot deformities like high arches and curled toes. There is also less muscle mass and a numbness/lack of feeling or sensation is the hands and feet. CMT progresses throughout one’s life. Basically, my feet are ugly, I have a hard time with balance and I trip a lot and I don’t feel temperature very well on my feet and lower legs. Uneven ground is really hard to walk on. Where is there a lot of uneven ground? Italy. That is an old country with a LOT of cobblestone. So I spent three months staring down at the cobblestones to carefully place my feet exactly where they needed to go. The severity of CMT (depending on the type) can range from being unable to walk to mostly chilling, but a cobblestone will take you out.

Anyways back to art and AI. I was really nervous that when I put my ideas into Claude it would just come back with a detailed description of a painting and it wouldn't feel like the idea was mine anymore. I sat on these ideas for a long time for this very reason. I knew I had something that I really wanted to work on, I just had no direction at all. Finally I figured I would try it and If the AI spoiled it I would scrap the idea. This was really my first time using AI. When Chat GPT first became available I think I asked it a few things just to see what it was. I thought “huh cool” and then never went back. I had the opportunity to talk to one of the professors in Italy teaching Thematic Inquiry. We discussed the way he taught his students to learn what kind of questions to ask the AI in relation to their art. I kept being really skeptical of ever using AI because in my mind I thought it would take away all the creativity behind having an idea for a painting which is always my favorite part of starting a new project. He asked me at one point what the difference is between going to AI for inspiration and going to Pinterest. I didn’t have a good answer.

Here is some of what I asked Claude and what it came back with and then how my inspiration was struck:

First I gave very minimal information about the type of art I make:

Me : I make oil paintings of interiors. I also make art about growing up catholic and being a woman. I want to combine the two things, but I need ideas on how

I got a long response from the AI and I won’t put all of it in, but here is one short example of its response

Claude: Reinterpreting Religious Scenes: You could place traditional religious narratives in contemporary domestic settings - imagine the Annunciation occurring in a modern woman's bedroom, or Martha and Mary's story unfolding in a present-day kitchen.

Now this is what I was worried about happening. I like this idea of the annunciation in a modern setting (although I do not paint figures). I would be interested in this as a painting, however this is in no way my idea. This was fed to me directly by the AI so I would scrap this all together and not pursue it.

Me: I like the creation story of Adam and Eve. If Eve were alive today what would her bedroom look like?

Claude: Her space would likely blend natural elements with modern comforts. Perhaps a room with large windows overlooking a garden or natural landscape, creating a dialogue between her interior space and the external world she was meant to tend.

This is really not a revolutionary answer and of course the natural world and garden of Eden references would come to mind when thinking of Eve. The one response Claude had to this inquiry that I found worthwhile was that there might be a half eaten apple on Eve’s nightstand. I would change that to a pomegranate, but I like that idea.

Me: What artwork could be made about Charcot Marie Tooth?

I would say I liked the AI’s responses to this question the most because it had pretty bad ideas but they gave me just enough push to find a direction I wanted to go and come up with my own ideas.

Claude: Threshold Imagery: Paintings of doorways, stairs, or other architectural transitions could symbolize the physical challenges of navigation while also representing psychological thresholds of acceptance and adaptation.

This answer gave me the idea to do a cobblestone installation of cobblestone’s made of ceramics to represent the fragility of CMT and also the danger of uneven ground. Thinking of the art in a gallery, maybe there is a functional cobblestone walkway that people walk on to get to the paintings. Not sure yet but I am excited by the idea.

Claude: Invisible Symptoms Made Visible: Create interiors with subtle visual distortions that convey sensory experiences like numbness or neuropathic pain - things others can't see but that profoundly shape one's experience of space.

This gave me the idea to paint an interior and while the paint is still wet wipe away part of it to blur the image; representing numbness.

To each of my questions it was giving pretty long responses. I only included the responses that helped to spark an idea. I still think using AI to help me make art is a huge crutch, and a slippery slope to actually never having an original idea again. I recognize that if I did actually care enough about using AI there are much better ways to ask my questions. That is why classes like Thematic Inquiry exist now.

I want to give an example of my creative process for my painting “Playing God” to show just one way I get an idea for a painting from start to finish. In 2020 I was laying in bed one night letting my mind wander and I had the thought “what if there was a beehive in the shape of a human heart” I wrote that in my notes app and forgot about it until a year later and then I built my “Heart Hives” sculptures of two hearts made of beeswax. I knew I wanted to put them in a painting at some point, but I didn’t know how, so they sat for another two years. In that time I had also been playing around with drawing playing cards, especially the queen of hearts. I had a lot of ideas that I put in my notes app, I even attempted a painting and did a couple still life setups, but ultimately none of it was working. I then attended a lecture on Byzantine Icons and nearly every painting of Jesus depicted him making the same blessing gesture with his hands. For whatever reason that was my main takeaway from that lecture and I knew I wanted to include that hand gesture in my art somehow. Later when I was taking a shower (I find that right before sleep or during a mindless task with no distractions is when my mind can wander free and really take the time to think. Maybe this, more than anything, is what sparks creativity and ideas.) I had the vision of a hand making the blessing gesture with a queen of hearts playing card between its fingers and the heart hive in the other hand. I wrote the idea in my notes app while still in the shower. That was it and the painting was made. I set up my tripod, took the reference photos, did a sketch and started the painting. Now obviously not every painting can take four years to come to be like “Playing God” did. But this is the way I like to make my art, by getting inspired by the things I learn and do and see and then finding the moments of stillness where inspiration can strike. Asking AI for ideas and then adjusting them as I see fit is not what I want for the future of my art making. I will probably explore the ideas I mentioned in this newsletter but I do not intend to go back to AI for assistance again. If I do, however, I intend to be very transparent about it.

Heat Wave in Brooklyn

There’s a heat wave in New York. It is humid, sweaty, and moist. The city is under an excessive heat warning and I am working overtime to keep our top floor apartment cool. Most people have fled the city in favor of the cooler coast or their family homes with central air. The heat brings with it a sense of solitude. Big gatherings are just too hot. The L train is down, keeping me local so I’ve been spending my heat wave alone listening to Norman F’ing Rockwell on repeat. Perhaps Lana Del Rey’s most critically acclaimed album to date, this album is americana in spite of all its shortcomings, recognizing the flaws of an American existence and still holding hope for its future.

It’s hard not to see the shortcomings of America. The flaws are expansive under our current administration and yet our country's best attributes are also on display as people recall our morals and look towards our founding as insight into our beliefs and promises; “No Kings” the most recent demonstration of this while ICE continues wrongful deportations and Trump begins his unconstitutional war on Iran. At the same time, I felt a profound relief at being alone. At last, I think only of myself. It feels like a guilty pleasure when there is so much dissatisfaction.

It’s hard to feel isolated in New York. I’ve never been to California, but from what I hear it's much easier to feel Angeles isolation as illustrated by Lana in NFR. And yet oftentimes in the city that never sleeps, it can feel rather lonely to want to sleep and rest alone, away from all the noise. My shades are drawn to keep the hot sun from heating up my room and when I leave the apartment the sunlight and heat hits me strongly, squinting to look both ways and cross the street. It’s easy to observe others when you’re alone. I refuel alone but I don’t ever find myself truly desiring solitude; complete and consuming. New York is alive and invigorating when you have the bandwidth for it and over stimulating and draining when you don’t. I find that oftentimes what we see as solitude can often encourage deeper connection and open availability for others. I found this on my walk.

The heat has pushed people outside for the bare minimum of air flow. Bushwickians are sunbathing in Maria Hernandez park, speedos and all in the tall grass that make me wonder about ticks. Tents are set up around the volleyball and soccer fields for people to hide from the sun while the brave play their sport for the larger entertainment. Ice cream trucks man each entrance to the park and folks of all ages lick contentedly, savoring the cold touch to their lips. Troutman street is closed for pedestrians to walk and shop local businesses. There's a biker gang sporting a dress code of leis and Hawaiian shirts enjoying the open street. I walk by KCBC where Meg took me when we first moved in. “We should grab a drink there when she gets home from her weekend away.” I think to myself. An hour later, we do just that and as we step inside we sigh in relief, lovely central air.

Julia’s Library

I am currently reading “When the Earth was Green” by Riley Black. It is a non fiction book about “plants, animals, and evolutions greatest romance” it is basically going through time and explaining how life formed, how life bounces back from ice ages and extinctions and focuses on plants and their incredible adaptive processes and their relationships with animals throughout earth’s history. I am loving it, it feels like all my childhood wonder is coming back. I am learning tons.

Bernadette’s Library

I’m still finishing Onyx Strom. It’s been slow but I’m beginning to enjoy it. No further comment at this time. The final 20 pages are a make or break for me.

Julia’s Playlist

“Something Beautiful” by Miley Cyrus.

This song blew me away. It seemed like a totally different direction for Miley. It felt grown. I was not expecting anything like this song in her discography and unfortunately it did set my expectations for the album much too high, but I would rather have one amazing song then a few good-but-could-be-better songs.

Bernadette’s Playlist

It is a Big Yellow Taxi Summer for me so far. I’m switching between the original Joni Mitchell and the Counting Crows cover. I’m listening to my folk artists and wondering when they’ll start charging us a dollar and a half to see the trees! I’m critical and hopeful all at once. It’s kind in it’s scrutiny.