Imagine my surprise when I opened up my newly arrived copy of Quilt Visions 2004, the catalog of the biennial exhibit of top notch art quilts, to find Charlotte Bird had made an Andy Goldsworthy quilt!!! Hers really looks like his rocks, no? Including the graduated colorations that are a hallmark of his work.
Surely you arty types out there could have told me that this quilt was created, entered, accepted and published way before I got my inspiration! Don't I feel like a complete moron now? Here I am thinking that I have made something so personal and wonderful, and it turns out to be just another attempt at this same idea...which wasn't mine in the first place. Aw geesh.
DARN. Back to the drawing board...
Well, join the club. It happens to me all the time. Just go ahead and do your version - just to have for yourself. I do like it!
ReplyDeleteOh Puleeeze! Yours are "inspired by." Charlotte's piece is a little too flattering if that's the sincerest form of imitation. (If you ask me...) Matchstick Moons are in their own solar system!
ReplyDeleteAnd apparently I'm not the only one who likes rocks in a linear format. But did she sew watch parts on hers?
Nothing is really original. We all dip out of the same pool. That sounds filthy, doesn't it? My leaves look like your crotons and your leaf stitch. Heaven forbid any of us make a circle or a pod shape. I think that Pam is the only one who is safe from being tagged an appropriator. IT'S ALL GOOD, as they say (they being the appropriators, me included).
ReplyDeleteCharlotte truly made a Goldsworthy quilt...
ReplyDeleteYou were inspired by Andy to make your own work. Atleast 3 times. Each iteration changes.
Yeah, but the next time Andy Goldsworthy does one of his circle/twig sculptures, I'll bet a whole bunch of different people say "That reminds me of Melody Johnson's Matchstick Moons!"
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't fully understand what's going on here. You were inspired by Andy Goldsworthy to do Matchstick Moons? But Charolette also was inspired by Andy?
ReplyDeleteBut I'm looking at the work itself, and the inpspiration source is entertaining but really incidental to the art itself. Does the work stand on it's own merit?
If you asked me, Charolette's piece is okay, but not as powerful as Andy's original work. Matchstick Moons is maybe unrecognisable as inspired by Goldsworthy unless to those who were told.
And yet Matchstick Moons is a much stonger piece, because you have not copied someone else's imagery, but reinterpreted an inspiration that can be found often in nature, into your own artistic language. Much better, I think.