Insert Something Witty about Imitation and Flattery Here

a chill photo from a recent vacation for the vibes.

May was a year and June was a rollercoaster! I've shared a bit on IG about some of what I'll be writing about here but I'll expand a bit on some things as this post will be a bit more like a journal than a thing with a clear lesson. I've been making a lot of work recently as I've found a way to play with watercolor and started doing meditative blob/spot/boob paintings and things since May. The inspiration came from my nervous system being totally overloaded after my son had a medical emergency that ended up with us staying a few days in the Pediatric ICU. Everything is fine now but the trauma and lingering anxieties of that kind of experience are what me and my husband are working through right now. In the midst of all of that, I'm also having *~*~deep thoughts*~*~ about my career, where I see my personal practice going and all those fun existential related things that come up when life forces you to see what is most important without your permission. As a result, I've "hunkered down" a bit more and am focusing on me and my family and stopped doing as much yearning/planning for community focused projects as I had. 

In the midst of ALL OF THAT, my work has been stolen and imitated and it's just made me reflect on all of the let downs I've experienced over the years and how to mitigate those into the future. It's also made me simply not want to work with or trust other people beyond what my job requires. My work has been copied or presented without my knowledge or permission a two times this year alone. And it's not AI or some foreign entity profiting off of it -- in both instances my work has been co-opted by people I know and trusted and who didn't take the time to reach out and ask or share their plans with me. I'm not sure why and I have reached out to these individuals and have either not heard anything back OR have had folks gaslight me. 

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example of a boobie painting. more on these soon.

​In the past I would think, well maybe they didn't get the message or maybe I didn't say what I meant or needed clearly enough or maybe I wasn't nice enough. I would do a lot of mental gymnastics to make it somehow my fault for not being a good communicator but after years of therapy I finally feel done with that way of thinking. As much as I want to believe the best intentions were in place, the impact is more important and the impact for this stuff is that people did something unkind and it hurt my feelings and that matters too. 

Earlier this year, someone I know presented a workshop of mine (with my slides) and claimed that I taught them how to facilitate the workshop. That never happened, but I fear that years of collaboration and friendship may have been misconstrued to imply inherent permission to facilitate something like this. In this case, I know if they had reached out and said "Hey I have a last minute opportunity, do you mind if I share a version of this workshop I have paid you to facilitate in the past?" I likely would have had a quick solution that preserved my years of labor and expertise AND helped them have something meaningful to present. Instead my slides were used and my workshop presented without my knowledge except for a public post thanking me after the fact. I've reached out with no response and I fear that relationship may have been permanently damaged. I think about the fact that I am still paying off my college loans, I've paid and attended trauma informed facilitation workshops, and how much work and iteration I've done over the last 10 years and how that often gets missed when something like this happens. I can say, without inflating my own ego, that all of that time and effort I put in makes what I do look easy but that shouldn't be a license for others to say "I can do this myself" and proceed to do so in this way. It hurts and I don't know how I can feel comfortable working in community again after this violation. 

In the most recent case of my work being copied/imitated, my aesthetic style was co-opted supposedly unknowingly. What hurts about this instance is that the artist worked with me on a project and saw my process/practice in my home studio. The aesthetic of the mural they copied in a painting of theirs was co-created in part with the community I worked with for months leading up to the final design. While I don't own the specific elements, there's a context and nuance to the work that I did for this project that is being willfully disregarded. The artist and I worked together for months on this project with me as lead artist and designer. I am always open to input and they were critical of my style and yet, imitated it for their own project. I did reach out and received a response that really disappointed me. Rather than go through all the details of what exactly happened and when, I just want to focus on the harm and what could have been different. In this instance, I feel like they could have simply let me know that they had an idea that was similar to the style I created for the mural we worked on together. They could have asked permission or at least say they would credited me and the mural publicly so that all involved artists and community members were given the respect we were due.

As a creative, credit and communication is extremely important to me. All of my murals have either a document accompanying them that include all of my references or image sources if I did not take my own photos or use my own sketches. Any artist that works with/for me is paid or compensated in some way with the exception of large community paint days which I try to keep accessible and share snacks or something meaningful with the community that participates. I do so much work to make sure that I am leaving my community or the communities I enter feeling like they weren't taken advantage of. This takes an incredible amount of emotional labour and I have often been a punching bag, absorbing criticism of my work, of the city, of injustice etc and I know even before having my baby I was emotionally and physically exhausted from all of this. Having taken a bit of a break from my own community based work to start my family, I feel like what I would have wanted was to rest, restore, and redefine how I show up in my community to preserve my energy and mental health. Instead, I feel like these instances have really made me want to distance myself from community based work just a bit longer.

I don't mean for this to seem so depressing or like a cry for help nor do I want this to seem like a commercial. But I do feel like I have found at least one new resource that I want to share if anyone else finds themselves at this point of their career. I've been working with a career coach through National Art Strategies to help me sort through all of this. It's like career therapy and something I had started prior to both of these incidents. I'm so glad I made the investment to do this because I had been thinking about how I want to tighten up my own administrative practices to protect myself. My current homework is to make a list of things that worked and things that didn't in the past decade of public and community based art. By going through what hasn't worked in past projects, I'm hoping to better identify boundaries for myself and create agreements, contracts, and a "rulebook" for what it looks like to work with me. I think part of me is excited to do this. I like having a plan and I like putting words to feelings. But there is a part of me that feels saddened by all of the ways I've been taken advantage of or hurt in past projects including these incidents. I'm working through it and have support and that's what matters right now! In the meantime, I'm finding joy in playing with work that is wholly mine and invites more play into my life. I have some projects brewing that might invite some community work again but I think things will look pretty different and I will be prioritizing my sanity through the process. 

That's all for now! I'll likely make a post about my boobie paintings soon!