Byron Center — For recent Byron Center High School graduate Jay Inthammavong, art has been “a huge part” of his life and helped him develop his voice.
I’ve gone through dark times and been able to express and process those times through art,” he said. “Art gives me a voice.”
He said his art teachers in Byron Center have encouraged him since middle school to submit his work to contests like the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition.
During his senior year, Jay took inspiration from the worldwide conversation surrounding using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate art used for social media, business marketing and personal use. He used that inspiration to create an editorial cartoon titled “Modern Theft.”
His commentary on the issue via illustration earned the National Silver Medal through the Scholastic Art Awards.
Jay said his cartoon came from having “a lot of feelings about AI.”
“A lot of people don’t understand that AI does not create anything original,” he said. “It may seem like you never get the same thing twice, but everything that it produces is programmed from other things that it takes from.”
He added: “AI art is not art because it takes away the soul of art. Art is not about the final product and using AI takes away the process of creating it. My teacher always said that errors are part of the process. When you look at (AI generated art,) it’s so soulless and that humanity is not there. What makes something valuable is all the time and humanity that goes into it; when you remove that, it becomes empty.”
This fall, Jay plans to attend Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design with the goal of strengthening his skills, making connections and pursuing a full-time career as an artist and illustrator.
“Illustration challenges me,” he said. “You have to make every pen stroke mean something to tell the story. Even in this comic, every panel matters and you can’t waste any.”
To aspiring artists, Jay said: “Never quit. … It doesn’t matter how bad you think your art is or how bad the ‘art block’ will smack you in the face. You keep going and one day you’ll make something and it will matter. Every piece of art matters in some way.”
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