copying?

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
- oscar wilde

beth at hint brought up the topic of copying/copyrighting/originality last wednesday and will continue to delve into it over the next couple of wednesdays... it's fascinating and has been on my mind since her first blog about it... she is approaching it more from the spiritual & emotional aspect, not the legal...
the comments that have come in are mesmerizing and thought provoking... i have grown because of this discussion and appreciate that so much...
i know that throughout my life i have absorbed oodles of images and experiences... as an art history major at college & a child fortunate enough to have had aunts who lived in manhattan, i saw significant and beautiful things in person.... i walked around gazing up at the architectural sculpture... i was also the child who could sit watching an ant hill, or looking for four leaf clover, or finding shapes in the clouds for hours... nature and art are key to my being... i have always been more of a visual learner... and i can still slow my family down when something catches my eye - like a preying mantis...
i have been designing jewelry for 10 years now... my style has been evolving & i hope that will never end... i entered the world of etsy a few months ago and, quite honestly, it was daunting... while i have made personal discoveries of artists who work in metal, glass, ceramic that have freed me, i have seen designers that have made me worry... why?
i don't want anyone to think i have copied them... i have even contacted people that i have 'run into' on blogs or flickr to let them know i am not... i just made the aquaintance of a really awesome designer - lorelei1141... and i panicked! she had just made some pieces using components that i had just picked up at a bead shop the week before - 'oh no' my head screamed, 'she won't like me, she'll think i'm a bad person, she'll think i'm ... copying.' and i felt compelled to let her know... she was patient with my fears and pointed out correctly that while we are inspired by similar things, our work is different... i knew this, and never in a million years would think it of another person, but i didn't want it thought of me...
i really value the people i have been fortunate enough to come into contact with in this community and don't want to jeopardize any of the relationships... i guess i would hope to be thought of as on an equal (or close to equal) footing with those i admire...
i know that when i work with components i have purchased, i feel a responsibility to those who made the original creation - those things that allow me to express myself in my designs... i am grateful for the talent and artistry that pushes me to dig deeper...

when i first purchased raku beads from makustudio, i had only seen her beads - and i loved them... because they seemed so special and unique i was determined to teach myself wire wrapping... so i picked up a book, etc... then i went onto her full shop and saw that she had done that herself! 'oh no! i'll be copying even though i didn't know it.'... so i came up with something else i hadn't done before... and that was ok - because i really love what came of it... and what it started for me...
for many of us, 'copying' means 'you are bad' ... like when you were in school and it was a rule or in terms of copyright infringement... of course, it just feels wrong and if you are in touch with your feelings at all you don't go there, but you can see the finger pointing at you... i even got nervous at the thought of someone thinking i might be when i wasn't...
in a different place and time, as julie from the hint blog pointed out, aspiring painters, sculptors, architects learned by copying from the hand of a master... it was respectable and practical... why wouldn't you learn from someone who excelled at what they did? and then you grow... your style evolves based upon any number of influences... if you are creative, it happens naturally...
when i am creating, i can feel almost as if i am outside of myself... i kid when i say the beads whisper to me, but it can feel as if i am guided (which is where the stories of the muses come from i am sure) - i guess it's really just a deep connectedness which transcends the beads into yourself and further...
i think for me it has to do with sincerity... and sincerity cannot exist without a pure heart... if you are pulling from yourself, even if you have absorbed images and influences from other places, it will be yours...
while i don't know that what i make will ever be completely original, i know where it comes from... and if i can come up with a personal type of signature, i am ok with that...
for me it becomes interesting when i am able to go past where i was - then i wonder if i can do it again... a bead i got from mika at pinocean did that, as did an acorn charm i got from beth... and so we grow... pleasantly surprising ourselves at times...
and which naturally, as another commentor pointed out, separates us from the copiers...