Imagining May Woolsey

On the evening of July 23rd, 1879, May started writing in her diary for the first time. Her handwriting is hard to read and includes many misspellings and almost no punctuation. We’ve pretty much deciphered what she wrote (more about that in a later post). The first page refers to mosquitoes, an ominous observation.

I’m imagining her sitting at her table before she goes to bed. With the help of a prompt to AI, I’m subtracting and adding to my drawing. Every time the Apple pencil touches the screen of the iPad Pro, a mark is recorded. Changes, mistakes: nothing can be altered for the time-lapse recording.

I’ve divided the video into three parts. In the first, I’ve given AI a prompt, placing a Victorian girl writing at a table. Interesting to note: I’ve learned I can’t prompt with the word “girl” because of AI concerns about child images. So I now say woman.

In the last post, “May Woolsey Meets AI,” I show results of asking AI for different views of May’s portrait: looking around, 3/4 and profile views, and with smiles. The results are uncanny. So for the second video, I pull one of the images that most fits my drawing, showing May looking at her diary.

In the third video, I decide I don’t like the stripes or the flowers and add more shadows to the figure and the table. Then I search for a Victorian lace tablecloth.

She might have started feeling unwell soon after the party. July 26th is the last entry. She died on September 21st.

Who knew that when I started writing on Substack sometime in 2019 after my gig with the Sacramento Bee, so many journalists would flock to Substack. Afterall, where would we be without their journalism. But the competition for eyes is fierce, so if you’d like to support my work with a paid subscription, I’m happy to send you a giclee print. Just email me: staylorstudio@gmail.com.