A Word on plagiarism
It saddens me greatly that with the wealth of creativity and originality out there in the world of contemporary craft and art there are still those sad few that feel it permissible to plagiarise other artists hard thought out and created pieces of work, and pass them off as their own.
My career in textiles began in 2008 and by 2010 the cat in the shoe became my full time occupation. The features which have become synonymous with my work were originally taken from a drawing made by my partner for me, in which he envisaged the cheeks in the style of the spokes of a bicycle wheel, I added to this long skinny black and white legs and intricately made shoes, a design which has been included in most of my pieces ever since. My trademark I think.
Copyright is a strange thing. What it means basically is ‘keep your hands off of my work please’ but unfortunately although your work can be covered by ‘copyright’ it doesn’t actually prevent another person, if they have no pang of conscience, from looking at your work and going away and making it themselves usually in an inferior manner.
What the plagiarist fails to think about is the time and effort that each maker will have put into that piece of work, and the pride felt when an idea, possibly thought up while on the school run, or hanging out the washing, makes it from brain to hand and produces a piece of work of which you can be proud, and that this creation may have taken many hours of thinking and designing and then redesigning, before it becomes a final piece.
Every artist strives to create a unique style so imagine, just for a moment, how hard it is to see that someone else has picked up your hard thought out idea, and, without any of the stress and strain that you yourself have worked through, put the piece out there under their name and claims all the glory for themselves!
As a general word of advice - if an artist wishes you to copy their work they will sell the pattern - if they don’t - then please keep off!
