True Craft Confessions

Tres Chic Mixed Media Purse featuring an altered image from an early 1930s European publication Copyright 2009 Margot Potter Published in Crafts 'n Things Magazine

If you watch my videos on YouTube you know I do a little feature called: "True Craft Confessions."

So for today's confession: I am working on some very important projects for a variety manufacturers for CHA. Yesterday I had a full craft meltdown after spending the better part of the day on a project. The first half...flawless. The second half...let's just say that I found myself using my teeth to remove some mistakes. I can just hear my mother-in-law saying, "Don't use your teeth for that!" Now in the midst of this drama I found myself fully grasping the absurdity of using my teeth to rectify my problem and how hilarious this would look were it on a video. Which it wasn't...which is a good thing. Trust me. It's been a long week...and I'm not quite there yet. Then at 5pm on the dot as I was preparing to go feed the piggies (we have two rescued pot bellied pigs that live in their own little cottage outside)...I remembered that my book edits were due...today.

Oops.

Ugh.

I have one more little thought to add to my posts of the past two days which is a sort of a True Craft Confession of its own. Hopefully a friend who is a copyright attorney of some note will be answering some of my questions in a guest post here on the blog in the very near future. You may be asking yourself, what's the biggie Madge? Why not draw your own images or take your own photos that look like vintage photos?

Well...here's the thing. I have been thrift shopping since I was 19 years old...which if you did the math would make that 27 years. Yup, I'm 46 and I'm not afraid to admit it. I had a huge collection of vintage clothing which I mostly sold when I moved back to the East Coast from the Bay Area back in the late 1980s.

I have been collecting ephemera for a number of years. My first find was a 1940s magazine tucked into a drawer in a house I rented. After that it was old tin types and faded Victorian photographs. My roommate and I had them on display and we'd tell guests that they were our ancestors and make up stories about them. Since then I have amassed a large and lovely collection of magazines, letters, post cards, advertising cards, calling cards, greeting cards, Halloween items, Christmas items, buttons, beads, bits and baubles.

The reason I find these things so infinitely intriguing is because they have a history. They've been places and seen things. They were held by hands that are no longer here. They have stories to tell. They are in a sense a bridge to the past. These beautiful things, these lovely people, these wonderful books and letters...they are fading slowly into oblivion as I type. When I use these images in my artwork, I don't just cut them out and plop them into a frame, I integrate them into collages and mixed media jewelry in layers with inks and paints and wax and embossing powders...I combine them with new items and create a new work of art. I am in my mind (and perhaps this is my flawed and egocentric rationalization) creating a bridge from the past to the present and into the future. I am participating in a dialog. If I were to draw similar images or take sort of Victorian photos, that would be me recreating something through a lens...but repurposing the actual images is me celebrating something from the past and giving it a new life.

I'd like to envision someone in 100 years finding one of my designs and repurposing it again...so there's a thread that keeps connecting us through the time/space continuum. We are creatively conversing. So I want to be certain that in using these images that appear to be out of copyright based on my interpretation and understanding of copyright rules...I am not breaking copyrights inadvertently.

So there you go. Yes, I can draw and take pictures. I do use my own pictures and drawings in my work. I also use what I believe to be public domain images I've manipulated and collaged in my work. I have recently cut up magazines and altered the pages considerably to create collages that contain both vintage and new paper. I want to know if that is okay or not.

So I'm exploring. I will keep you posted on what I discover. Until then, I'll be hoping not to have to use my teeth to fix a craftastrophe anytime in the near future!

Look for shorter and sweeter posts in the week to follow! Hee.

xoxo,
Madge