You copy it, you bought it

If you discover your work has been copied — perhaps someone has used an image on their website or blog — you feel violated. But the fact is: you have made a sale. Since US and European laws deem your work to be copyrighted the moment it sees the light of day, the person who has used the image has bought a “use license.” They just haven’t paid for it — yet. Your job is to collect the payment. Having a notice about licensing your images on your site makes it a bit easier but if you but you can still decide upon a fair price and begin your attempts to get paid.

The person or organization who has used your work is a fan — they think it’s great, which is why they picked it. If you don’t want to pursue payment, keep this in mind and think about what you can do to help your fan promote your work. At the minimum, your name and a link to your site.

TinEye is a (free) reverse image search. It also exists as a plug-in for Firefox, Chrome and IE. It finds exact matches even if they have been cropped, edited or re-sized. It won’t necessarily find your images: they have to be its database, which is constantly expanding, but it’s a start. Of course a Google search for your name or the title of your work might prove some leads, too.

War Art, Warscapes

Warscapes contains art and writing dealing with current armed conflicts, especially in regions that have low or no attention within the mainstream media. It is currently accepting (until June 30), images to be used for its "cover." Contact editor Bhakti Shringarpure for details.

Mail-art and delivery systems project

Read All About it! Interesting project from a subscriber in Croatia:

Papergirl Zagreb is planned to take place in June in Zagreb, Croatia. Papergirl is, in essence, a mail-art and delivery systems art project that is participatory, analogue, non-commercial, and impulsive.

Submitted artwork is distributed like a newspaper - the artwork is rolled up into bundles of 3 pieces or more and distributed to random people in the street from bicycles, paperboy style. The idea is to surprise people with an unexpected present and brighten up their day with art.

Everyone Can Participate and Anything Can Be Submitted: originals, copies, prints, photos, drawings, paintings, collages, mixed media, zines, writings, textiles, stickers, etc. Format, style and technique are free. We want anything you make and we encourage you to send multiples of your work, so it can be put into many art rolls. The only requirement is that the art be flexible enough to be rolled up! Each roll will contain several different works, meaning that each one holds a unique combination of works.

All received artwork will be shown on the blog, and exhibited at a venue in Zagreb before being distributed.

Deadline for submissions: June 1st, 2012 (arrival date!)

Mail your works to:

Papergirl Zagreb
c/o Ivana Rezek
Jackovina 27
10000 Zagreb
Croatia

Online Art Fairs

An artist trying to sell her work in "the mid five figure range" wrote us: With the traction that the VIP Art Fair gained this year, I am hopeful that there is another way to reach collectors: online marketing. Certainly it's unproven territory, but I believe it's a new business model worth investigating.

We replied: Online art marketing has been around since at least 1996. In my 18 years on the Internet, I have seen major online galleries and other "art fairs" come and go. So far selling art work on line has not proven profitable for artists in general, although it often has been for promoters who charge artists fees for representation rather than relying on commissions from works sold.

So far, except for some rare quirky incidents, what has sold on line are low-priced decorative works, low-to-medium-priced images of celebrities (usually movie or sports stars) and work where the buyers already own or have personally seen work by that artist. There are online sales that are simply dummy sales -- artists and dealers "selling" to each other or to themselves in order to create the appearance of sales.

Missing from online marketing is not only the lack of a physical object for the potential buyer to relate to in a way he/she cannot do with a jpeg, and, where there is no dealer involved, the "stamp of approval" that most collectors require before making purchases that cost more than pocket change.

An online presence is a very important tool for exposing your work and perhaps getting potential buyers motivated to see it "in the flesh." But we are a very long way from significant sales at significant prices unless there is a substantial change in human nature or the advent of an Internet that can present objects in a thoroughly convincing virtual reality, perhaps accompanied by the ability to converse (also in virtual reality) with trusted dealers and experts.

As far as the alleged success of the VIP Art Fair, you might be interested in a review of it in Forbes Magazine.

Phony Biennale "Invitations"

We recently received an email recently from an artist who had gotten an "invitation" from the two businessmen brothers who run what they call the "Florence Biennale." She was proud and excited they were offering her the chance to be in their Effetto Biennale, a newer venture. (It translates to "Effect Biennale.")

She had initiated a Kickstarter project to raise money to participate and wanted us to contribute. We replied that we couldn't help her out, that it was a vanity venue and she had not been singled out for her artistic accomplishments but, along with who-knows-how-many-others, for the chance that she might fall for the sales pitch. She responded that she had read that some other artists who had attended the previous EB said they had met other artists from different parts of the world and that some of the work in it was good. While she did have doubts about it, she continued, and wouldn't pay for it herself, she thought it would be fine if she raised the money from other people and let them pay for it.

Vanity Venues

If you get an email saying you have been invited or selected to participate in a show or a book and it turns out you have to pay to be in that thing, what you have gotten is simply a sales pitch, not an invitation as the term is normally meant in the art world. The sender is preying upon your vanity and naivety and hopes you will not understand you have simply been been invited to give them money, as have tens of thousands of others who have gotten similar emails. Those who fall for such a pitch should avoid mentioning it on their resumes lest they turn off curators and collectors who would see it as the mark of an amateur.

AOM Subscriber Countries

While the majority of AOM subscribers to the paid Professional Edition are from the US, we also have subscribers from the following:

Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Canada, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Moldava, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, S. Korea, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Turkey, UK, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, USA.

For the Free Edition, there are also subscribers from: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belguim, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Turkey and Ukraine.