Imagine compiling 50 images of artwork, pieces worked on for hours over the past decade, and giving them to an AI image model to analyze. The AI does its best to create new images based on specific prompts. Then comes one last step: taking those images and turning them back into paint on a canvas. That’s exactly what Ben Bloch has done in his latest collection, Make Me a Landscape, Do Not Include Any Sky, on display now at Finch Lane Gallery.
Bloch came up with this idea while chatting with a programmer friend. The two, he said, had been discussing AI and its profound effect on society in recent years. That made him think about creating a custom AI model trained to specifically recreate his own art style. So, he asked his friend: “How easy would this be for you to make?”
Photo credit Lexi Lilly
When visitors enter Finch Lane Gallery, they are met with Bloch’s large-scale works on each white wall. The two leftmost pieces are not from the collection but examples of his previous artworks that went into training the AI model.
In the left corner, a book filled with art used to train the AI model sits alongside a TV playing a video with soft music. The video shows the AI image first, then transitions into a blank canvas that slowly, frame by frame, fills with sketches and brushstrokes until complete. The two images are presented side by side, allowing visitors to analyze the differences between the AI reference and Bloch’s finished work. He made this, he said, to show it was a handmade process, even with his use of AI. To him, it’s a tool just like a pencil or a paintbrush.
Of the hundreds of images he prompted AI to create, Bloch said he looked for strong composition and color palette, and more importantly, pieces that could be improved upon. His favorite, depicting a grouse, is one where he felt he achieved that goal, turning a flat, vague AI image into a painting with depth, detail and anatomically correct legs.
“The goal of any painting is to elevate it from the source that you’re working on,” Bloch said.
Photo credit Lexi Lilly
Photo credit Lexi Lilly
The names of each piece are the actual prompts Bloch used. The painting that “took the title from the show,” he said, is called: A Lush Forest, Fall Colors, Green Waters, Do Not Include Any Sky.
Compared to his previous landscapes, Bloch said he feels that this collection is “no less, or more” his own creation. The process, to him, is like a mirror that keeps reflecting, endless back-and-forth collaboration. While AI is a tool in the process, the result is still completely Bloch’s work.
People are “very intensely reactive” when AI enters the conversation, Bloch said, and he’s encountered some resistance from people not willing to look deeply at his process. While he has concerns about AI being used as a creative crutch, he acknowledges there will always be good and bad uses of the technology.
“It makes me feel a little sad just because I think art should be open to everything,” he said.
“Art is both changing literal, physical materials, but also hopefully transforming and changing the way people think,” Bloch said. “We should never limit what the possibilities are for what art can be.”
Make Me a Landscape, Do Not Include Any Sky is on display at Finch Lane Gallery until Feb. 20. Afterward, it will be moved to the Salt Lake City Downtown Public Library March 14 through April 24. Visitors can also hear from Bloch during a Gallery Talk and Art Exhibition Reception from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. on March 28 at the library’s Level 4 gallery.
This article was written by University of Utah student journalist Lexi Lilly. It is jointly published by Salt Lake magazine and non-profit Amplify Utah to elevate perspectives in local media through emerging journalism.
