I fully understand the desire to learn from other people's art. It's a time-honored tradition, and without a certain amount of creative borrowing, art would never develop and diverge and progress into new styles and forms. I fully encourage people to experiment with my techniques while they work on developing their own distinctive style. But it's the last part of that sentence that's important: THEIR OWN DISTINCTIVE STYLE.

I've been fortunate enough to study with several fantastic jewelers, including Kate Holly-Clark and Elise Matthessen, and I owe a great deal to them. Without their inspiration and help, I'd probably still be sitting here trying to figure out the caging technique in All Wired Up and throwing snarls of wire across the room. While I probably could do direct copies of their work at this point, I've made a very conscious effort to take the techniques I've learned from them and apply them in different ways so I could develop my own unique style of wireworking.

Bringing things full circle, I also have a friend who -- with my blessing -- studied my designs and techniques at length and then gone on to develop her own very distinctive style. She's now an accomplished jeweler in her own right, and I'm delighted to say that I've been able to learn things from her.

That, to me, is the heart of working in any artistic medium: learning from those who've gone before you and those who come after you, and taking the things you learn and making them your own.

(And don't just rely on technique and other artists in your medium for inspiration. Listen to music, go to museums and look at the famous paintings, go to the greenmarket and admire the colors and shapes of the tomatoes, take a walk in the woods and look up at the trees. And then go home and take the techniques you've learned, and use them to bring that inspiration into your work.)

I've spent my entire life working in the arts in one capacity or another, and originality is something I hold very dear. Intellectual property rights and other legalities aside, I strongly encourage all of you to focus on developing your own style, rather than copying someone else's work. You'll be a better artist for it, and the world of art will become an even richer place.

(Or to put it a lot more bluntly: please do not copy our designs. They are not in the public domain, and duplicating them or making pieces which are highly derivative is an infringement of our intellectual property rights. It's also not going to let you grow as an artist.)

-- Kythryne Aisling
Memphis, Tennessee, October 2006