Lyn Bishop : Sharing Secrets

Today’s New York Times article on cruise ship art auctions is pretty scary. It discusses big name artwork (mostly prints) being auctioned for many times over their land-based market price. The work is often sold to first-time bidders who may not really know what they are buying until they get home and suffer buyers remorse after doing more research and finding out signatures may be fake or that the print is nothing more than a quality poster.

This is the kind of story that makes everyone uneasy. It worries me, as a printmaker myself, that some unscrupulous art-dealers-turned-snake-oil-salesmen will take advantage of naive clients. Thankfully, there are websites like Fine Art Registry where artists can permanently register their art when they create it and where collectors, museums and galleries can register their collections.

While the big name artwork may be appealing, why not consider collecting artwork directly from living, breathing artist alive today. Not only can you collect some amazing work, you’ll support a living artist in their career. And if you’re lucky, you may, in the process, develop a one-on-one relationship with them, too. Now that’s priceless.

(Art: Missing Threads, by Lyn Bishop)

The Los Angeles Times reports a lawsuit filed against the temporary Louis Vuitton boutique created to sell Takashi Murakami products in the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art. According to the Times, the Vuitton luxury shop failed to provide the collector with the proper documentation in the form of a Certificate of Authenticity for the the Murakami prints he purchased there.

Do you know what a Certificate of Authenticity is? Did you know that it is required by law to be provided upon collector request when purchasing a multiple in the State of California? Why should you care?

A Certificate of Authenticity, as defined by California Civil Code Section 1740-1745 is a written or printed description of the multiple sold, exchanged, or consigned by an art dealer.

A Multiple, as defined by this same California Civil Code is any fine print, photograph (positive or negative), sculpture cast, collage, or similar art object produced in more than one copy.

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This proposed amendment to the Copyright Act is designed to allow the use of copyrighted works in the event that the copyright owner can not be found to acquire the appropriate license, hence the term Orphan Works…

That sounds fine on the surface, but what kind of ‘good-faith’ search would a prospective user of the artwork need to preform? Where would they start the search? When would they give up the search? In my opinion, this Bill creates an effective method for legalized theft of countless works of arts, and creates a new big business in the process.

The Bills before both the House and Senate will do nothing to strengthen the rights of copyrights owners, and instead will impose a heavy and costly burden for the artist who wishes to protect their intellectual property.

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For years I have carried a small folding paper-based portable art portfolio with me everywhere I go. Dog-eared and well worn, it served it’s purpose as a quick tool to share my art with others. It has it’s limitations – it holds only 12 pieces – and updating it with new work is a labor of love (print out thumbnails, cut thumbnails, glue thumbnails to portfolio - you get the idea).

But no longer! I still carry my portable portfolio with me everywhere I go, but now-a-days, it is in the form of a sleek and ultra-modern presentation contained on my iPhone! (more…)

At the beginning of 2008 I realized that this was a milestone year for my art career. Not only am I celebrating 10 years as a practicing, professional artist, I realized that in the early months of the New Year, I would add my 100th collector to my community of supporters.

Wow! This was cause for celebration and I wanted to find a way to say Thank You to each of them.

So, I got to work in the print studio, cutting paper, mixing ink and burning screens for an edition of 100 prints as a special gift for my 100 collectors. The image is from my travels, from the town of Uji, Japan — a town seeped in the smell of roasting tea . (more…)