Ann Demko wrote:Having been an addict for about two years now, I am still relatively new to this field. I find myself thinking of new ideas and then I worry as to whether the color combination, shape, subject matter was something I may have seen somewhere else. I ask myself "should I proceed? Should I research and make sure somebody else hasn't done this particular shape and pattern before only in different colors? I want to cast a piece someday of a geometric form...but I have seen several very close to the form I want to use and they could be of the same glass (don't know for sure becasue I've never seen them up close and personal). I would use my favorite fininsh, but since there are only a certain number of finishes available, I could possibly use one that has been used before on this particular shape. Does that constitute stealing? As you can see, my creative side has been somewhat blindsided by this fear that I am encroching on someone elses property. What is a new girl on the block to do? Ann Demko
Hi Ann...
Here's my two cents. Cliches don't pop up from nowhere. Here's a good & appropriate one: "There's nothing new under the sun." Or the universe for that matter.
I'll "Go out on a limb" here & say that even tho "imitation is the greatest form of flattery," I claim that imitation is the fundamental skillbuilder no matter what your goal.
My writing & rhetoric profs in college assigned projects such as "write 5-pp essay about xyz in the style of Hemmingway." It's a way to learn from inside that master's head, in a sense. Perceive an intimacy with why & how of the writer's choices. It's intense, really, when I give myself over to the process. I've never published anything you'd mistake for wannabe Hemmingway. However, the skills I learned in this hands-on, inside-the-skin way have colored everything I've written.
2nd notorious personal example. One of the most difficult, but most rewarding, assignments in film school-- copy a scene from a black & white film. This is primarily a lighting excercise, but geez. We duped a ridiculously complicated -- but cool-- scene from Citizen Kane. The newsreel scene early in the film. You know it... see a newsreel projected on a screen in a darkened room lit by, it seems, the screenlight. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air (so you actually have to illuminate smoke & take light readings somehow!)... anyway, intense & detailed study of that brief scene, and replicating it somehow (with lousy school equipment too) forced us to another level technically. But (more important to me) it was a momentary bridge into the complex brilliant brain of Orson Welles, one of my film heroes.
I guess this is a long way of saying that copying, imitating IS learning. Some people will copy and imitate...and then convince themselves it's an expression of their own creativity. It is not. Some people are shysters at heart and market the copies as their own. And they'll sell some. It's the way of the creative world & the Luck Of The Draw.
If you copy Klaus Moje's techniques exactly, you will end up with somethingthat looks like a Klaus Moje piece. But would you claim its' originality? Try to sell it as yours? People do it. I don't get why they do it, as it indicates minimal self-respect & can't get no satisfaction -- from doing it.
Yet, where would we be if Klaus weren't there all these years to lead the way? In fusing, we see Klaus Moje EVERYWHERE. It hasn't interfered with his career methinks.
I've learned a lot from Jack Dopler about his way of doing pattern bars and high-temp fusing and coldworking. ( I was making up some ways previously but it was all goofing around.) Now I just love to make hifire stuff and pattern bars. They ain't like Jack's, even tho he's incredibly open and keeps few secrets if any. Jack learned a lot about the techniques in a class with Klaus. Jack learned by copying, but will never put those pieces out there in the world. They're Klaus pieces, not Jack pieces. Yet Klaus is all over Jack's work, as well.
There's nothing new under the sun.
Yet no two snowflakes are alike.
That's how the world works.
Sorry for rambling.
PDXBarbara
