Mr. Plagiarizer

I went to pick up the boys at Grandma and Grandpa's house sometime last week.

Isaak was coloring this:

It's cute right? Me and a lot of other people thought so. I said, "Wow Isaak that's a really good drawing. I love it!" He smiled and said, "Thank you!" 

Rubber bands are his thing. He puts them in almost everything he does. He's a collage artists, or a sculptor. Not really an illustrator per say. We'll see. He may loose interest in the arts all together like his big brother Mica did.

I posted his little master piece on Facebook. People thought it was cute.

Then the other day I said, "I really do like that airplane that you created."

He said, "Ya I just colored it, and added the rubber bands. I found the drawing in Grandma and Grandpa's closet."

I guess there's nothing wrong with what he did. It's no different than him coloring an image out of a coloring book. It's just that I should ask him next time, "Isaak did you create all of this?" before I claim it's my son's work.

My guess is, that it's my oldest nephew's drawing, and Isaak's coloring.

Isaak needs to sit in on one of my copyright lectures. HA HA When you think about it most works are from something inspired by, or something changed from something else. Does that even make sense? 

Dale Chihuly hasn't blown his own glass for years, and his work is in tons of art galleries. He's estimated to be worth $10 million dollars. He draws what he wants, or tells glass blowers what he wants, and they create it for him. Then he decides if he wants to put his name on it.

Ironically his eye patch has something to do with a glass accident. He got in a car accident, which took his eye. Source

Andy Warhol didn't like getting messy. He to had others paint, and do screen prints for him often.

In fact he hired someone to pretend to be him and go on talks for him. Source

Visual artists aren't the only ones that steel, or borrow from others.

Weird Al Yankovic has borrows from others all the time. Beat It became Eat It. He's found himself in trouble with the law a few times. He's always been let off.

Source

The beloved Disney most certainly takes what they can get for ideas. You'd think with their movie Beauty and the Beast, and the musical that they came up with, that it was their own idea. No worries, it's an old story, so they had full access to it. Now if you think of Beauty and the Beast you think of the Disney movie, not the classic story tale.

They also have their stuff out for a limited time only, and all the other times keep them in their achieve. Source

The singer, song writer, piano player and creator of the Lilith Fair Sarah McLachlan had to go to court towards the beginning of her career because she copied her stalker's words in a letter he sent her. Many mistook the song Possession as passionate love song. When in fact many of those words came from her stalker. She went to court only to find out her stalker had hung himself.

Once I belonged to her fan club. That was before they used her song in a sad puppy commercial. Source

What is original anymore? It's difficult to define. Especially when you're an art teacher. You want works to be original. It is true that designers are given copy, and photos to use to get the job done. It's also true that big named, fine artists hire someone to do the things that they don't want to do. Then they slap their name on the work, as if they own the whole thing.

If I have problems defining original works. Try explaining that to a 5 year old.

By the way I'm not bashing these artists. Sarah McLachlan was once my favorite singer.

Copyright Infringement

• What happened to the days where you could just trust that art students did everything on their own?
• Yesterday I was showing my past student examples of good work. There was one campaign for the new Spider-Man on Broadway. 
• A student said to me afterward, "Hey Mrs. Apel look at this!" It was the same piece that someone turned into me for his whole campaign, on the internet! I was annoyed to say the least. He got a good grade for coping someone's work. 
• I so wish I could take grades back! Ha you don't have your degree anymore because you don't deserve it!
• Morally I just could not have done that in school. I took all my own photo's. In those days I had to walk, develop the photo's and walk again to pick them up.
• I did do something just to slap it in his face. I posted on his facebook page the link to the work found. I said, "This looks familiar!" He made some silly comment back about sending into all kinds of competitions too. Then said he was being sarcastic by the way. But I do know it ended up in his portfolio!
• The guy's girlfriend is pregnant. She had made a comment on his page saying something like, "Oh I get to handle wedding plans all day, while you get to lay around on your lazy butt." I so wanted to comment, but refrained. 
• One of my co-workers said that I should say this to him, "Did you really get your girlfriend pregnant on your own, or did you have someone help you with that too!?!" I think I'll pass on that comment, but it is super funny! 
• He knows that I know that he was a lazy, and that I'm not happy with that. I will never give him a good recommendation. 
• This is happening more and more now! I'm not sure why, or how students can justify doing that! They are ok with it! It makes me mad, but it also makes me sorry for them. They spend a lot of money to go to school; they feel the need to copy their way through it. 
• They have multiple lectures on copyright issues by the way. There is only one of me, and I don't have time to look up 40 x 3 projects on the internet every other week. Even if I did, the internet is HUGE. The possibilities of me finding what they copied is slim.

• It's kind of like when you put a bucket of candy out on the porch for Halloween time because there is only one parent home to take the kids trick or treating. 
• You have to trust each kid to take a few, and just know that one bad apple is going to come and take the whole bucket of candy for him/herself. 
• That bad apple has to live knowing that he/she did the wrong. They will probably live their whole life being a cheat! Some parents support that. They train their kids to cheat through life.