Pondering a complicated art situation

For many years, I have enjoyed collage art, altered art, recycled art. The ecology bug hit me as a kid during the energy crisis of the '70s and it has stayed with me.

For many years, I have enjoyed making calendar photos into envelopes or other collage projects. When I worked at BigCo, I would go around in January and ask my fellow employees to give me their previous year's calendar. Many did so.

Our local nature center holds a fund raiser that sells recycled calendar envelopes among other recycled crafts. I have templates for making my own envelopes. I have re-wettable glue for envelope closures.

So this week, I was at the local mall, trolling for half-price 2007 calendars. As I looked at many of them, I noticed a sentence on the back cover.

The removal or reuse of these pages is strictly prohibited.

Well.

My mind tried to wrap itself around the many facets of copyright law and licensing and ownership and all. I frequent the websites of Lisa Vollrath and she is quite rightly protective of her designs and ideas.

She has made me wary of posting the ATCs I have received, for that is a photographic reproduction of someone else's work. I mentioned the posting when I sent the invitation, but Lisa's website advises that I should have written permission from each artist (whether or not they consider themselves artists) before posting their work on my site. Cumbersome, but I understand.

Part of my love of collage is putting together new ideas, joining two items in a new way, for a new point of view or a new statement. It seems odd to me to buy a booklet of reproduced ephemera to use in my art when I could have some actual ephemera. Found items.

Does it apply to art that I would sell? The I would give away? That I keep for only myself but post? That I make and keep to myself? This is yet another arena where technology is growing faster than ethics and law can keep up.

So now, calendars are expressly forbidding purchasers/possessors from altering they images for other purposes. Better they go to a landfill than to have another life. Did I buy the rights to enjoy the images and use the date tracking, but not the right to use that image?

In many cases, yes. I have the shed pages of an old page-a-day calendar with the art of Mary Engelbreit. It is easy to see that I cannot legally, ethically take a page of her art, trim it, glue it to an ATC, and call it mine. But if I start with her art, add glitter glue, a phrase from a magazine, a sticker from the teacher store. Now, is it my art? Legally, no. According to Lisa's site, I am using copyrighted images in my art. Even to make it for my own enjoyment on a wall in my house.

If the copyright expires, then it is a public domain image. Lisa takes many public images bought at flea markets and such, I assume, and tweaks them, gathers them, arranges them, and sells the collection as her own art. Her own work created that collection of found/purchased images.

Ron at Big Happy Funhouse also posts photos he has found or bought. Photos by ordinary people of ordinary things and everyday life events. Does his posting mean that he now owns the images? His cropping makes it his? Can I use an image from his site in art work of my own?

I was taken aback and disappointed in the announcement on the 2007 calendars. I can see that the artists and publishers want to preserve their rights to the images, but that restricts me in the art I want to do. Better that it is put in a landfill than put on a card.

I can still use my own art in my collages. Doodles, painted backgrounds, test printed from Word in a fun font (do fonts have copyrights?). Can I take text from a magazine? From a 1992 Harlequin romance? Very complicated.

I don't have the answers. But I would like to hear how it looks from your neck of the woods.

One sheet bowl / box

This is my other long trip origami, making snack bowls for the kids. These boxes also work well for holding scraps when I am trimming papers for art projects.


In each direction fold the paper in half and in half again. This will give you sixteen parts as shown, four rows and four columns.


Fold the top and bottom short sides into the middle.


Press the edges flat. The gap should be in the middle, running from side to side.

Take one corner and fold it so that the bottom edge is aligned with the quart fold. The top of this new triangle will *not* meet up with the center. That is more than okay, it is the big secret.

Do the same to the other four corners, folding them just to where the bottom edge touches a vertical quarter fold.


Take the the little strip of paper that stick above the corner fold, and fold it down towards you, right where the corner is. You will trap the two corners under this fold.


Do the same to the other side. This "trapping" of the corner folds prevents the box from falling open while in use.


Slide your fingers into the pocket under the little folded strip, on both sides. Gently lift your fingers. The sides you are touching will move apart and start to stand up like a box. The sides you are not touching will start to move closer together and stand up like a box.


Crease the corners and around the bottom.There is your new little box.

One sheet, eight page booklet

Ms. Cookie over at Math Teacher Mambo wrote about a one sheet, eight page booklet. She gave a verbal description, but a commenter asked for visual help.

I make a booklet like this for every long trip we take. They are hand for recording mileage, state license plates seen, silly quotes overheard, and more.


Fold the paper into eighths as shown.


Fold it the "hamburger" way and tear or cut the middle section from center fold to the quarter fold, as shown.


Unfold the paper. The cut should look like this.


Stand the paper up the "hot dog" way. Hold the left and right edges and start to press your hands towards each other. The middle will start to buckle.


The paper will continue to buckle.


When the center, buckling diamond has collapsed, lay the piece down.


Put your hand under the left hand side and fold it over to the right. You are now touching the cover of your new little booklet.


Your booklet should look like this when you are done.

More craft than art

Ganoush and I took a beginners' knitting class today with the homeschool group. She learned how to cast on well enough. Then she got frustrated, bored, and cast off her stitches. After milling about for a bit, a teacher gave her some burlap and a yarn needle, so she stitched a light blue VW Beetle.



Here is my first ever knitting work, thus far. I did get the hang of the knit stitch, though it isn't second nature yet. I have one errant stitch that wraps around the finished rows, visible as green in the upper left corner of the second photo. I really like working with variegated yarn. It makes it easier to describe the stitching process: the green part goes over the pink part.

We were shown examples of knitting a book marker or a bracelet or a wash cloth. For a wash cloth, they recommended cotton yarn. I will be happy to just make a square. I'll stitch until I don't. I have an all-day car trip in my future. This could be part of it.

I seem to be doing most of my work right on the tips of the needles, but then it feels tight as I push the completed loops farther down on the receiving needle.

The yarn appears to unwind itself as I go. Much like separating strands of embroidery floss. When I go to make a stitch, the yarn on the holding needle is more a set of four strands than a piece of one yarn. I have missed portions of the yarn on a stitch.

I also have had a piece of yarn leap frog over its neighbor stitch. In the first photo, there is a stitch of yellow between two pinks. On the flip side, the yellow is between a pink and a purple. I don't know how I did that.

And I intend to keep this for myself, even though my general philosophy about starting a new craft is:

When trying a new craft, make your first project for your mom, or someone else near to you who will have to love it no matter how it looks.