The Parallels We Go Through...
just to get through this thing called life.
Up early at daybreak drinking coffee to fuel a sleepy mind and body, the last thing on my mind was what kind of dog breed best describes me. An hour later, I enter a free Creative Mornings Palm Beach collection of creatives, meet a nice guy Jonathan checking people in who informs me that the icebreaker consists of writing a favorite dog breed on a sticky name tag along with my name. Within a minute, I decide on “Blue Healer,” the breed of dog that Bandit is on Bluey. With two young children my life has become a revolving circle of Bluey-isms. Yes, Bluey-isms are a thing...
At Creative Mornings Palm Beach, I meet Stu, an AI marketer with “Cat” as his breed, a “Pitbull” marketing expert, a “Golden Retriever” lawyer, well you get the picture. As we drink some of the best “rocket fuel” I have had since the last Creative Mornings coffee, aka Chik Monk coffee, I meet a graphic designer, an artist and a man who works in chamber music. Meeting so many entrepreneurs/creatives in such a short amount of time makes me forget the heavy traffic, accelerating and braking on the interstate, finding a paid parking space downtown, I endured on my morning commute here. Anytime there’s a chance to attend a Creative Mornings event, it’s well worth the trip, even during rush hour.
The true gem of Creative Mornings Palm Beach events are the creative speakers. Camilla Webster, a Palm Beach artist, with a unique background growing up in New York City, with ties to South Africa and stories about a parent who had a career as an international journalist, connected the dots on parallels, the theme of the meeting. When Webster began showing art in galleries as an up and coming artist, only 13 percent of art displayed in galleries was created by women.
Art in South Florida, back then, was driven by men. Today, Webster spoke during the kickoff of the first annual Women’s Art Week Palm Beach. Some of the art selections, by women artists for this event are being shown at Providencia, 1300 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach.
Providencia was the host of this Creative Mornings Palm Beach event and a hub of art, social causes, a faith-based community and church as well as a safe place to seek mental health counseling.
Webster talked about the future of art and artificial intelligence (AI). She presented about the parallels between technology and art today. Webster talked about how AI has a lot to learn about art and how artists have a lot to learn about AI. Recently, Webster found AI to waste her time in creating a power point about art. AI informed Webster that the power point would take three minutes, than 15-minutes, than three hours… A day later, Webster received the final product, AI art that was more Jackson Pollack than Webster’s appealing art.
Paraphrasing Webster’s presentation with my own objective opinion sprinkled in, I suggest making AI your friend, your editor. Make AI assist. Don’t let AI take over. Use it as a resource. A helpful parallel if you will. Art and AI can coexist. Use platforms like Creative Mornings to be creative. Don’t be afraid to approach with an open mind. Look up Webster’s work. Collect art.
Webster recently put a painting on Instagram that was bought by a Palm Beach woman for $10,000. She had to get the artwork over to the new owner within a day and she was seven-hours away, so she had her boyfriend serve as art installer and together they drove seven hours with the artwork to the mansion for delivery. When Webster and her boyfriend got there, the woman wanted the artwork hung over wallpaper. The boyfriend installer suggested that it go on a separate wall without wallpaper. He hung it there and the mansion owner said he was right, it should have went there all along. He approached the task with an open mind. The new art owner and Webster, the artist, are seeing things creatively in a parallel universe.