To Begin With...
...I'm not referring to plagiarism, copyright violation, or anything else that implies anything used illegally or without permission. This is simply about adding papers, images, stamps, ephemera, stickers, tapes, rub-ons, collage images, and anything else that could fall into the category of "sold for the purpose of making art".
Here and there you pick up conversations about the pros and cons about the use of things in artwork that were not made expressly by the artist. At one end, there's the group that would always forbid anything not made by the artist, except maybe the paper and the crayon. At the other extreme, there's the (thankfully small) group of people who buy a stamp, ink it, stamp it, and say "Look what I made".
In my opinion, the first group lacks imagination and needs to "get real"! After all, would they invalidate one of Lidia's fabulous and famous spaghetti sauce recipes because the the tomatoes were tinned instead of hand-pressed fresh? Possibly, but I would hope not. And the latter--well, maybe if you're 5, but any older than that and you'd better just say "Look what I stamped"!
There is a thin line that runs through the middle of this however, and assuming that copyright issues are not a factor, there is also some legitimate concern over what you should call your own, and what ethically should be credited to others, even though you assembled it. If you're interested in my thoughts on this, click HERE to continue reading...
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