Thank you Lisa for not folding under this onslaught. I hope to read your blog more often in the future.

Deb

I think if you’re basing your career (and income) on marketing a technique vs. selling a fabulous piece of art, you’re going to have problems. What surprises me the most is that many of the artists who seem to have problems with the techniques issue and who are involved in this discussion are well respected and nationally known. They have no reason to feel threatened by someone using a similar technique. People don’t take classes from well known artists because that’s the only place where they can learn a technique (anyone can combine different colors of clay–I work with preteens who do it every day)–they take classes with an artist because they want some contact with the amazing and individual creativity, and the quality of workmanship, that inspired and shaped the art to begin with. You sell yourself, your vision, and your skills with the classes–not the technique itself. You can’t personally or legally “own” a technique, but you do “own” your own art. My advice to anyone hung up on this (nationally known or not) is to let go and move on.

http://christinekane.com/blog/how-to-not-take-things-personally-a-practical-guide

She’s a wise woman, and kind of funny, too.

I dont think the class system works as straightly than you put it, but that is a good sketch of it. I think there are lots of subgroups, variations and groups based on geographical location or based on where in the net people hang around. The group that sells on Etsy is IMO really good example of strong, vivid and fruitfull artistical co- operation where I have benefitted even when I am not in the group myself. The Etsy folks have inspired me tons – not because the work is so stunningly technically new but because they all seem to have the voice of their own and do not seem to be too influenced by the general claying community. They consentrate on pleasing their customers and their developement on the feeld seems to be quite rapid because of that aspect.

What I myself find alarming is that people feel that they are treated as worthless when they experiment starting from the base they learned from someone else. If someone teaches something they must know that some people out there are bound to experiment with the knowledge given and go further than even the teacher has gone. All the teachers speak about how they want people to learn and explore – and then when they do the community seems to be very upset. Sorry to be so harsh, but I have very little time with the net nowadays and this is the impression I get from snipets of discussions here and there. It might not be true – and it can be that I have only read 1/100th of the discussions, but still that is one thing I have seen so many times.

I do remember a discussion with a friend and teacher who told about a student that discovered 10 more variations in two weeks to one technique the teacher had developed for 2 years. She was jelous at first but then she realised that the jelouness came from the inner feeling of not being “better”. It happend some years ago and the actual case is not that important, but the discussion made a strong impact to me as I am also teaching claying here. Sometimes I find myself feeling afraid of “not being the guru anymore” but the feeling passes as soon as I do something new and move along. But I am in Finland – no one here knows claying like me. Its easy to be star here as there is not really any competition. I still have income coming from teaching even if I teach millefiori stripes, spirals and bullseyes. The medium is so new here that I do not even need to teach the stuff I am using for my art. Right now it is more than enough when I teach the basics.

One can not own a technique. If you teach and share it, others can do lots of stuff with it including teaching and sharing the technique. In claying community we have had the moral rule of not teaching the things we have learned from other teachers, but the reality is that techniques are not copyrighted designs. In any other medium people teach what they have learned. If you are not ready for being outwitted with the ideas you publish and the techniques you discovered it is not wise to share them or teach them.

I dont share some of my claying in the net at all – and I am very picky about people who I share the pictures with email. With two kids and one company and lots of teaching basic claying (yes, the kind that starts from how to condition clay!) I have not had enough time to my art to really go where I want to go before I try to publish it farther. This is my choise and I know that means that my reputation as clayer is based on the work I share in public – that is mainly crafting. I dont mind that – I have choosen it.

See what Pörrö has been blogging about: Joka wanhoja muistelee, sitä tikulla silmään

Thanks for chiming in with your thoughts! I really want to get to the next guild meeting, and I will, unless I find myself roped into throwing a birthday party for the little guy that day. Hopefully I can do it on Saturday and keep Sunday free.

1. The "superstars": Includes many pioneers in the field. These are well-known, well-respected names that are on the tip of most clay enthusiasts’ tongues. They are the artists that the other classes have been looking up to for many years now.
2. The "minor celebrities": Those who are not necessarily full-time artists, who may have been working in clay for a long time, and who may have a small but loyal following, but are not household names
3. The "newbies": Those who are new-ish to polymer clay, and excited by it, but still getting their feet wet.

At the Synergy conference, I was impressed by how easily these groups fit together. I consider myself one of the second group, but I had some wonderful conversations with “newbies,” and I partied with some “superstars.” It was a delightfully class-free environment, and as such it was very exciting to me. Now here we are less than a month later, and one thing that I am seeing quite clearly is that these group distinctions are alive and well. The reactions to my earlier post have almost entirely followed along “class” lines:

1. The "superstars" have almost entirely stayed out of it, at least publicly. It’s hard to know if they agree completely, disagree completely but don’t want to speak up, agree with what I said but not how I said it, or don’t really have an opinion.
2. Many "minor celebreties" have stood up and said either that they agree wholeheartedly, or that they agree in part.
3. The "newbies" are questioning whether involvemet in this community is worth it, and whether they’re going to be persecuted during their learning curve.

It’s the reaction of the “newbies” that I find most disturbing. It doesn’t bode well for the future, if a majority of the new blood is afraid to experiement and put their work out there.

I don’t really have any suggestions here, I just have been finding it interesting to note that invisible lines are being reinforced in the course of this discussion. I don’t have any experience in any other artistic communities that can tell me if this is normal or something unique to us, but I suspect there is a degree of normalcy in all of this and it will work itself out as we mature along with our medium. At least, I hope so!

And, Pörrö, you spoke your case so eloquently – I wish your blog were in English (or that Google could translate from Finnish) so that I could keep up with you more often. Thanks for dropping by!

And on a completely different note, after trying to write the whole post in this dinky editor, and trying to make it look nice, I have decided we definitely need the ability to preview comments around here. Off I go in search of a plugin

Taking something that someone sells and giving it away for free is obviously wrong (duplicates of class handouts is a good example that was mentioned) but showing how you used your knowledge from a class to make something different is going to either inspire people to try it and come up with yet another variation, or make them want to take the class to start from the same point that you did.

In the sewing world, a pattern is copyrighted, but the general rule is that if you want to use it as a jumping-off point for your own, it needs to be changed a minimum of 10%. (Looking through the big pattern books, and seeing so much stuff that looks the same, I’d say that’s more of a suggestion than a rule. Just my two cents.) The idea is that you don’t profit from someone else’s work, or steal potential profit from them. If someone took you to court over this, they’d lose. Go rest easy. You need your sleep to keep up with those boys, if nothing else.