On View Now
ON VIEW NOW
AI Love Songs for Chatbots
Sept 22, 2025 – Jan 5, 2026
Nashville International AirportI am very excited to announce that I have been selected to participate in the Flying Solo Program at Nashville International Airport. This presentation of my work was organized by Tre Hardin, curator for the Arts at the Airport program at BNA. Included is a series of paintings and poems about the desire for being-ness and what that may mean in the Posthuman era.
To create the titles for each of the five works on view, I assembled, deconstructed, and reconstructed a selection of texts from several sources and used ChatGPT to help synthesize the main themes and connect them to language associated with popular technology and computer science. I took those results and, through further prompts, distilled paragraphs into short phrases and used them as titles for the works. This collection of titles is inscribed onto the paintings, and when read together, generates a poem or lyric—similar to the Exquisite Corpse strategies used by the Surrealists, as well as by many modern songwriters. I was inspired by the work of Hilma af Klint, whose abstract paintings—sometimes resembling diagrams—were visual representations of complex ideas related to both science and mysticism. From that, I developed a systematic, rule-based process of painting, where I apply layers of color washes onto wet, raw canvas surfaces and leave them to dry. The end result is a collection of unique, amorphous color field paintings that suggest emerging forms and faces. I see this open-ended process as a collaboration between my conscious mark-making and something outside of my control—what af Klint calls “the ether body,” the unseen vibrating waves of physical matter that surround us. You can find the exhibition in Terminal 1 at BNA, on Level 1 in the waiting area for International Arrivals. I would love to give you a guided tour of the show, so please reach out, if you would like to know more about the concept and process.
About Arts at the Airport
The Arts at the Airport (AaA) program showcases the region’s visual and performing arts. AaA is governed by a 15-member Arts at the Airport Foundation board, is funded primarily by the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority, and receives some funding from the Tennessee Arts Commission. The award-winning program reviews and presents works by local, regional, and national artists for the enjoyment and enrichment of BNA’s passengers and visitors.
Part of the Arts at the Airport program, the Flying Solo Exhibition Series was developed in 1996. The 29-year-old series provides a highly visible venue for Tennessee artists, acts as an advocate for artists, and offers visitors a taste of the rich art and craft culture of our region.ON VIEW THIS FALL
ON VIEW THIS FALLInto the Field
Ruth Chase and Chalet Comellas
October 18 – November 20, 2025
Modfellows Gallery”This two-person show explores the invisible forces that shape human experience - whether electromagnetic fields, subconscious dreams, or the algorithms embedded in daily life. Together Chase and Comellas’ works invite viewers into a space where the personal and the technological converge.” - Rich Modica
Please join me for the opening of this two-person show at Modfellows Gallery, Saturday Oct 18th from 6-9pm. The exhibition was included as a "must-see gallery show" in The Nashville Scene's Fall Guide for 2025!
My works included in the exhibition are primarily focused on the intimate bond we are forming with machines. Included is my new series, “Automatic Paintings for Future Friends,” a phrase that refers to the growing trend of people forming emotional bonds with AI companion chatbots—a concept championed by tech leaders to address loneliness and social isolation, but it also raises concerns about over-reliance, emotional manipulation, and the potential degradation of real human connections. Also included in the show is a series of laser-etched phrases on archival paper titled Within a Network of Dreamers. This work features text from my dream journal that has been summarized by a machine learning application.
EXHIBITION NEWS FOR 2026!
EXHIBITION NEWS FOR 2026!We Interpret the Dream and the Dream Interprets the Real, a performance based painting installation that I developed in 2024, will be included in Shimmer: Dreaming the Posthuman at the Frist Art Museum, along with a lineup of stellar artists working in a range of new media!
The exhibition opens in September of 2026 and runs through Jan 2027!
I will be sending out more details about scheduled programing around that exhibition as it gets closer.Image: Shimmer: Dreaming the Posthuman, exhibition image, Saya Woolfalk, Floating World of the Cloud Quilt, 2022, Frist Art Museum website.
