Ok - I finally bit the bullet and submitted a piece to a juried show - which means I have taken the leap of putting my art out there to be judged and I also can't show it to you until after the show (if it's selected) ... but I can show you one of the beads on it...
While, in this case, there may not be a written rule against sharing art submitted for judging, there is certainly an unwritten one in my mind....and, speaking of unwritten rules, in the age of the internet, ethics seem to be flying out the window.
Robert Genn addresses this issue in his art letters this week (found at http://painterskeys.com/ under clickbacks...more about this later)...Asian 'entrepreneurs' cruise the net and grab photos from photographers, painters and other artists and reproduce the art (without permission or payment) at an alarming rate.
In Robert's case this week, some woman grabbed one of his weekly letters and posted it verbatim under her own name on her own blog...shame on her (she has been dealt with and now no longer has a blog...).
There was an instance within the last couple of months where a collage artist had a piece published in a respected genre magazine and it contained an image of a huge portion of someone else's art (the 'stolen' art was done by a friend of mine and published in another magazine; it was pretty blatent that the published artist used it...) and the published artist was called on it, but the damage was already done since the magazine is a national publication. Now anyone seeing my friend's piece and seeing the stolen piece really won't know which came first, will they?
So it all makes me think about putting photos of my art on the studio's website. If the net market is what I want to hit, I have no choice - it's a 21st century Damocles' sword. Do I want to sell my stuff? yes. Would I be flattered or upset if versions of my dolls started being offered by China? hmmm....well, I can't really see my dolls becoming the next Pokemon, so I'm not sure that it's an issue...but, then again, I have a friend who wants to borrow some of of my spirit dolls as examples when she teaches a workshop on Messenger Dolls....where someone would have to work hard at faithfully replicating the doll, but could still come up with a similar doll at the end of the workshop....but, then again, there's dozens of versions of this type of doll everywhere...I've even taught other people how to make them...so....
In the short run I've decided not to worry about it - in the case of the workshop, it's for art teachers - I see it as kind of like me taking a workshop: it's for the creativity and experience and gaining a few new skills. As for the website, I'll just make sure the pictures are clear, but small enough not to have great resolution at bigger sizes. It's not as though they are flying out the door....
Now - the Painter's Keys - if you subscribe to it, you get an email from Robert a couple of times each week - it's a blog, but you don't have to go out and read it, it comes to you. He's a wonderful artist. It's often about painting, but it's really about art and the creative process and a wide variety of people are in the "community" that reads these letters (which is why that woman was caught so quickly....). Sometimes I read them and delete them. Sometimes it takes me a week to have time to read them. And sometimes I print them and read them several times over the course of a month before tossing the hardcopy. I highly recommend it. It's nice to get an email from someone who doesn't want anything, there is no pressure to respond, and it stimulates thinking. I highly recommend it. Sometimes it's the most creativity I have at work all week!
So - off to the next project - the next original project...
puts a different spin on the phrase "out of my head", huh?
