Art, Design and Craft in a Copyrighted World

It used to be simple. As an artist you had an idea, you would sit down and start researching it. You could go to the library, the zoo, the park, the seaside, the art gallery or where ever you could find a visual representation of what you where about to draw. Then you would spend hours sketching, making yourself familiar with the shapes until the first draft of your drawing or painting would take form.

This is how I learned to do art 18 years ago. But then along came the internet, that was like the library, zoo, seaside, gallery etc. combined. In 2006 it was a fantastic resource to use in researching for example, how to draw a hare. It broadened the scope of things you could add into your art work. And at first it was innocent and there was no question of copyright, as long as you did not trace one image from another and call it your own.

Eight years later I take my pencils out again and start drawing and designing. But there is another thing I find myself doing, that I did not even consider during my previous stints of artistic expression. I now have to look through Google's image search at other peoples art work, not for the purpose of copying, but to ensure that my idea is original. There is something very soul destroying when you have to change your design, even slightly so that it does not look like it is based on someone elses work.

When did it come to this? There are only so many ways you can draw an ant so eventually in a world population of 7 billion you are going to accidentally create the exact same image purely by coincidence. The fear of being criminalized over artistic expression and the stigma attached is surely harmful to the soul of the artist and the creative flow.  

Art has always been, like science, invention,  language, culture and music based on what the previous generations accomplished. Artists learned by copying their masters and eventually evolved to have their own styles of expression. It was not criminal and it was not frowned upon. So why do we expect the current generation of artists to be completely original?  It is like telling an engineer to create an engine, without letting him use the invention of fire, smelting steel and a screw driver.

Thinking about this... Google "Kaj Stenvall" an oxymoron in the world of copyright, trademark and art. He is one of my favourite artists from my home country of Finland. Had he started painting in the 21st century, I doubt he would have been allowed to continue his career for long.

Art dedicated to the Public Domain: Fragile Good Will

There is not going to be any new historical material entering the Public Domain until 2019. Meanwhile when ever an artist uses a public domain image and alters it they remove those variations from the Public Domain into the world of private intellectual property.

The changes made need to be only as small as to add a top hat and a moustache onto the Mona Lisa. The unfairness is highlighted, when you consider adding a top hat and a moustache onto Mickey Mouse. Who do you think could get away with that?

So why is there such a difference? Why are the interests of commercial entities so much for powerful than the interests of the Public, that is every single on of us. This is a question to which I am searching for an answer. 

I wanted to address the balance and give something back to the world by donating some of my images to the public domain. To this day I have done so with one image, titled Sky Hare.

I would do so with more of my designs, if it were not for one concern. Any artist who alters "Sky Hare," even if they only colour him in, can automatically claim copyright to him, essentially even stopping me from using a coloured version him in my art work. That is how fragile my donation to the world is.

There are ways to protect the image, but they all involve holding onto the copyright and essentially licensing the work to the world. These are avenues I intend to explore with my other designs, but meanwhile I shall track the progress of "Sky Hare" and see how long he can survive in his new ever diminishing habitat. 

Stealing of the Common Hare.

The law protects the man or woman

Who poaches the Hare of the common

It shelters the villain who does not share

To leave the common to lack a Hare

The law demands that we atone

when we copy things we do not own

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who takes things yours and mine

The poor think that they do not dare

without lawyers that Hare to share.

This may be so for they must endure

Those who conspire the law to sure.

The law protects the man or woman

Who poaches the Hare off the common

And the common will then lack a Hare

Till we say no and bring it back to share.

Introduction to Marleena Barran Design

Most of my friends and customers know me from being a blacksmith who makes iron & silver jewellery that I sell in a Etsy shop called Taitaya. I have a wide variety of interests and one of the earliest ones was in graphic arts, painting and drawing. As the time to give birth to my daughter approaches and I find it more difficult to move and work I looked into alternatives of what I can do creatively instead during these last months of my old life and the first new months of my daughters new life.

This is where I returned to my roots. I have a range of designs that I created 2006 for a series of cast jewellery, based on mythology and shamanic inspired pictures of animals. I have sold a few pieces that I painstakingly sand cast out of those designs, but most of them I never released into the public. Some of those designs have proven to be desirable and got borrowed via social media, unbeknownst to me at the time. So I thought why let them sleep unknown in my sketch book for another 8 years.

Partly to this premise my new Etsy shop "Marleena Barran Design" was born. I would not be honest if I said this was not a commercial venture, but there is also ideology behind my shop, which is the main aspect that I will focus on this blog.

I spend a lot of time reading the Etsy forums and initially it was surprising to me the sheer volume of posts concerning copyright and the work of Etsy shop owners being copied, without permission. As an artist I feel the pain, but at the same time I was unsure on how it would ever be possible to control what we release into the internet.

My stint of Art school happened at a time, when the internet did not really feature in art. Even my then teacher was sceptical about whether the completely digital painting could even be considered art. The world has changed since then and now thanks to my new shop I find myself immersed in the world of copyright, public domain, creative commons and a whole lot of legal jargon.

 So this blog is an attempt to explore this wild west of intellectual and artistic expression and the concept of intellectual property in a digital world from the view point of an artist trying to make a living, but also from the view point of an artist who's entire production is based on the art, culture and knowledge of our ancestors. A creative Public Domain of works that is eroding the same rate as the blue slip clay cliffs around the Island I live on.

Welcome and please feel free to join in on the conversation.