Derek Eley is an associate professor of Digital Art at Virginia Wesleyan University and has an exhibit of his recent work on display in the library. The exhibit officially opens on Nov. 21 in the Barclay Sheaks Gallery, which is in the back of the library by the DVD selection
Originally, this exhibit was going to open on Nov. 7, but the official opening was moved back to allow for final preparations of the exhibit.
Half of the art in the gallery, the images of toys from the 1980s and 1990s overlaid with moderately current slang, has been shown in Norfolk Arts’ gallery space in the MacArthur Center, under the name “I’m so Cheugy.” The works were included in a series that grappled with generational slang differences. The exhibition ran in the space from Aug. to Oct. 2023. Cheugy is a slang word with negative connotations that was created to describe someone who is trying too hard to be cool or is out of date.
The art shown at the MacArthur Center contended with Eley “understanding that I can’t say it [current slang] and be authentic, but just still trying to, like, understand it.”
The second half of the exhibit at VWU is yet unnamed, and features landscapes generated with Adobe generative fill with graphic designs created on top of them.
“I thought it would be pretty cool to take the landscape, which is more of an idealist, traditionalist genre and photography, create that with the artificial intelligence, and then overlay like these digital, kind of abstract graphics over top,” Eley said.
All of the art in the exhibit was made in part with artificial intelligence though the degree for each exhibit varied.
When asked about the importance of using AI in this exhibit, Eley emphasized that AI is the direction that technology is going and to provide the best education to his students, he has to be familiar with AI.
“I like the theoretical side behind it, and how people can go back and forth and argue on these things,” Eley said. The exhibit is intended to invite discussions on the place and usage of AI in art production.
“I want to be like a provocateur in some way when I make work,” Eley said.
Some students expressed hesitancy about AI being used in an art exhibition.
“I feel like AI is used as a tool, but I feel like it shouldn’t be used to create imagination,” Madison Dragas, an undeclared sophomore in a ceramics class, said.
Because the art exhibit hadn’t officially opened, most students hadn’t gone to see the exhibit. Dragas viewed images of some pieces in the exhibit that were posted on Eley’s website and responded to them and the process of making them.
Dragas works in both digital and physical mediums and has used AI in the art making process for a class.
John Rudel, professor of Art and the curator of the Neil Britton Art Gallery, brought his class to view the artworks before the exhibit formally opened and students had a chance to discuss their experience in class.
“It’s great how the work inspired conversation,” Rudel said.
By Clay Yokom
kayokom@vwu.edu
