Recently at the South University Art Fair in Ann Arbor, an jeweler was asked to leave the show because his jury booth image did not match his exhibit at the fair. Maggie Ladd, the director, was alerted because of complaints coming from other artists exhibiting at the show. It turns out that the person had most probably taken a shot of someone else's booth at a show and used that for his jury image. In fact, upon closer inspection of the image you could see the name of the original artist in the photo.
The offended artist says, "In addition, during the Ann Arbor Art Fair last year a woman came up to my booth wearing a pair of earrings that I had designed. As I complimented her on them she said “Thank you, I just bought them down the street about two blocks.” She took them off and we looked at them next to my earrings that were the exact same design. I then had my daughter walk to _____ _____ booth to look at the work he had on display. He claimed that all of the pieces were his own designs, and said “Compare my jewelry with similar jewelry at the show, and you’ll find that I’m selling them for a third of the price.” I then brought this to the attention of the State Street Area show director. After being informed that my designs have an artist copyright, he had the earrings in question removed"... from his booth.
My question to you is: what steps can an artist take in this situation? what can we as a community do about this? what would you do?
This information comes to me from Paul Fisher at Juried Art Services.
Replies
my booth image from last year I used has one thing in common with my booth this year I've made so many changes. part of the art in it and the color of the tent. just seeing a different booth is not a sign something is up.
ideas:
1. two booth images from the same setup, each from a different angle. it's easier to photoshop in images at one angle like Larry experienced but making it convincing as a pair is harder.
2. bump the required resolution up. editing artifacts show up better at large sizes
3. make it so there's a second booth image on file which has the name showing. only after everyone has judged the photos the show promoter go through and make sure they match the names on file.
4. confirmed artist booth program. the person running the show does a process at the show. they check that the booth image matches their booth somehow (tablet, printout, etc) they can ask questions if it does not. if there's no good answer for differences they flag the booth shot as excellent, good or suspect. people with iffy booths gets flagged for review by shows you submit to. the jurys never see this to keep it impartial. a 4.5/10 as the lowest accepted with an iffy booth may make the 4.4/10 a better choice since that's a tiny difference.
as for the jewelry design, the answer is to sue. either the other guy independently came up with the design which means it's so common an idea that the copyright likely should be voided or he needs to sue to stop production of the product and get damages. as an example, someone did hearts inside shapes of states for jewelry and complained online when they found someone "copying their design" and people pointed out how there were dozens of people doing the design and for many years before this person. it wasn't really that unique.
a copyright doesn't keep someone from doing the same design before you
Larry Berman
I thought of that idea, but how do you do this?
wouldn't that encourage people to get lazy with their booth shots and/or effectively tell jurors who's been accepted in the past which is unfair
I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is an issue with no solution - unless the shows start asking for the artist's name to be visible in the booth slide, which goes against everything that's currently happening.
I once caught someone on my photography forum using my booth with his images dropped in. He actually scanned my booth picture from Shutterbug Magazine when I wrote the article about selling photography at art shows. He had asked people to look at his jury images on his web site not realizing that I had written the article and used my own booth picture.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100