Self-Portrait
2025
56″ x 58″
Materials:
Contrado.com printed cotton sateen from original artist file. Cotton backing, acrylic felt and Hobbs 80/20 batting. Cotton, polyester, metallic, and holographic thread.
Techniques:
DALL-E AI image generation, Photoshop Elements and Adobe Painter work with Wacom tablet. Contrado.com printed image. Free-hand stitching on A-1 longarm.
Knots & Tangles
All went smoothly until the quilting stage. My A-1 longarm experienced a major glitch, stopping completely about halfway through. Although there are no local service places for this brand, their phone support is great. I love my longarm but it has required me to get past a fear of machines and do some hands-on repair. With the A-1 technician on speaker phone, I was able to take apart the machine and replace the mother board. Quite proud of myself that I did this and finished the quilt in time to enter a perfectly themed exhibit.
DALL-e prompt: A dynamic and surreal depiction of a student furiously typing on a keyboard, with a whirlwind of vivid and diverse AI-generated images swirling around
The completing request of a short online class about “AI and visual thinking” was to sum up what I thought about the class using any AI image generator. I prompted DALL-E with “A dynamic and surreal depiction of a student furiously typing on a keyboard, with a whirlwind of vivid and diverse AI generated images swirling around.” Image returns can feel like playing the lottery, as so often losers come up. This time, my first return was perfect for the assignment, and even better, a great prompt for my own creativity! That is the point of using AI imagery, to spur the imagination and create different starting places for artists to then use in combination with their own efforts. I saw myself as that student and proceeded to make the idea come true. A serendipitous call for entry from SAQA (Studio Art Quilting Association) for “AI: Artistic Interpretations” presented exactly the perfect exhibit, which my quilt will now travel with globally for three years.
Work Contents
Paint Usage?
no
Computer Usage?
Yes.
DALL-e Artificial Intellegence Image Generation, Upscayl, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop Elements
Reliance on Reference Photos?
No, but photo of myself was used in composite with AI image.
Self-Portrait has been accepted into the global SAQA exhibit “AI: Artistic Interpretations”
Primiering at Louisiana State Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, Feb. 5 – May 10, 2026