Inspiration Coming Down the Line
We work in a very considerate community. There is much credit given to the artists who inspire us, and on Flickr and various blogs, clayers eagerly list the artists whose techniques they are practicing or who they drew their approach from.
This pendant, by Zuzana (Verundela on Flickr) of the Czech Republic, looks to be a combination of influences as well as materials. I would not call the liberal use of mica powders, embedding watch gears and wire into clay, and topping off a piece with resin unusual, but these approaches all came from somewhere else. Or at least they do not often come to us in a moment of pure, uninfluenced flash of genius. Even when we are not aware of it, other artists bring their influence to us by creative osmosis.
Here, however, we get a glimpse of the influential creative trail. Zuzana gives credit for this piece to Sabine Spiesser of Australia for the rather celestial looking faux enamel and wire work. But if you wander off into Sabine’s Flickr pages (papagodesigns), you’ll find she credits her faux cloisonne work to Eugena Topina of Maryland here in the US. Eugena’s wire bordered faux cloisonne enamel was one of the first tutorials I ever attempted to follow back in the days when I was expanding myself beyond the basics. The technique has been around for a while, but credit is still being considerately passed on. I also really like how global this influence can be … bouncing across the globe from the US to Australia to Eastern Europe. That is the wonderful thing about being an international community and a community very big on sharing and helping each other grow.
cool design.
Art is universal. Just like fire did not originate in one location, neither does art. Influence come from all over, and theft of ideas is not usually any artists intention. ( I could think of only one exception of late, an individual from a northern area with a website that takes others’ ideas, makes tutorials out of them and sells them.)
I could get on these forums and kvetch about people stealing the actual names of my designs that I came up with YEARS ago, but I don’t. Yes it would be nice to be recognized, but when people have already been glorified by the polymer art community, others have a hard time breaking through and getting noticed.
The tone of a few of these blogs have been almost hostile with regards to those not “crediting” every single artist that may have done something similar with being an inspiration. This is ludicrous.
If someone makes a blatant copy, I can understand why credit would be needed. and is essential. Stealing the name and design of someone’s piece, as was done to me, also deserves credit. However we all see the same things in nature, advertising, and media, so therefore we all being influenced by the exact same things.
This is the way it has been in art for centuries. Get used to it.