AI-crafted images (at left) share the space with traditional art at the new Dream Canvas Academy and Gallery at 20 Broad Street. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
Maribeth Woodford inside Dream Canvas Gallery and Academy. (Photo by Brian Donohue)
“I had two choices: I could walk around like, ‘woe is me,’ or I could learn AI,” she recalled, walking through the exposed brick walls of the new gallery at 20 Broad Street, just upstairs from Via Sposito restaurant.
The new venture is called Dream Canvas Gallery and Academy.
It’s a hybrid space with one room devoted to classes and instruction in AI, and a second space for exhibiting both AI and traditional art.
The classes will be taught by Woodford and outside teachers and instructors, including a New York City fashion designer who uses AI in their work and a Rutgers professor who developed a curriculum to teach AI noobs.
AI-crafted art on the walls of Dream Canvas Gallery and Academy. (photo by Brian Donohue)
The classes in AI will be not just for those interested in the visual arts, but educators, entrepreneurs or anyone looking to figure out how to use it as a tool for what they do.
“It’s going to be AI for everyone,” she said. “My goal is to teach everybody AI, the right way, ethically. People are skeptics, people are haters and I want to really show them the right way of using it.”
Woodford is a Monmouth County native who worked in Manhattan’s diamond district, then owned a yoga studio for eight years that shut down as a result of the pandemic.
She returned to the corporate world, then dove into AI after her fateful layoff from her job in franchise sales.
Soon, she was being hired to create AI-crafted visuals for businesses, both large and small, from law firms to health and wellness brands. She was named one of the Top 100 AI Creators on LinkedIn, and her work and story featured in industry publications like this one. (That’s one of her images in the photo at right.)
Inside the gallery space last week, she was preparing for Dream Canvas’s grand opening this Saturday.
Large display screens that look incredibly like paper showed a rotating display of stunning AI-crafted images that artists had submitted in response to her global call for submissions.
On another wall, a display of hand-painted works by an Ocean Grove artist Daphne hung against the brick.
The grand opening will feature more traditional art, including an appearance and display of art by Colombian artist Yuseph Zupata, along with the works of photographer Mark Mauro, New York fashion designer Mari Matarazzo, and California artist Ali Sabet.
That is the idea for the gallery, she said: to be a place where both traditional and AI art can share space to create a conversation and a melding of ideas between the two.
“It’s really going to be a mixture of both, which is what I want to do because traditional artists don’t like AI,” she said. “I really want them to blend in because I want them to realize that it’s used as a tool and not as a crutch.”
She is planning rotating exhibitions, classes and workshops, community events and youth programming. Dream Canvas will offer free trial classes for its first month.
The grand opening is free and open to the public. It runs from 2-7 p.m. on Saturday on the second floor of 20 Broad Street.
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331 or yelling his name loudly as he walks by. Do you value the news coverage provided by redbankgreen? Please become a financial supporter if you haven’t already. Click here to set your own level of monthly or annual contribution.
