*Must Read*-Bronze Art Fraud!

[HappySculpting]

Hi everyone,

Went to the foundry to view my lady in wax and was told about an art fraud situation that is very pertinent to us all.

Check out bronzecopyright.com and find out all the details....

Here's an excerpt:

"You've established a career as a sculptor, found a distinctive way to express your creativity. It's taken years of struggling, putting yourself, your family and financial security on the line, not to mention subjecting your deepest thoughts for the public critics to size up or tear down. But you rise above and move beyond all that, settling into a steady stream of creativity. You have loyal clientele, committed galleries world wide promoting your work and bottom line, you have integrity.

One day you find one of your original sculpture designs being duplicated in very poor quality and offered for less than we pay our foundries. You find yourself in a quandary of taking this as the ultimate compliment or a blatant insult. Time goes by and you continue to discover numerous other attempts on your designs. Clients are noticing these duplications on the market, your galleries are hearing clients say they already own a certain piece of yours and purchased it at a greatly reduced investment, heck, your local gardening shop is selling your wares and your images are everywhere on the web. Rumours are spreading that these pieces are being cast at foundries overseas for a minimal price, and how could that be stopped.

You are forced to decide between fighting for the integrity of your creations and ignoring the infringement altogether. You may question copyright protection; how it works, when does it take effect, is it too late for me to file my designs, etc......."

They show pics of the originals and the knockoffs.

At the foundry I took pics of Bruce Wolfe's new sculpture going under rubber and then asked if I could post pics here and they said they'd have to ask Bruce and see. And then they told me about the bronze art fraud that is going on and the website, so I thought I'd share this with everyone...

Makes you wonder whether we should be posting up close pics from all different angles. They can look at the pic and have their sculptors reproduce the style, design, idea.

[justme]

Thanks for the warning. I guess we should all take heed.
j

[fused]

I don't think that never posting images on the web will ever stop this fraudulent production of bronzes. The intent is certainly cashing in on a growing market of unregulated cheap knock offs and not flattering the original artists through imitation. It will be good when local authorities can step in and legally confiscate the inventory of these importers. But that will be a huge job for law enforcement to excecute and I don't know if they are up to the task.

When first reading this thread I immediately thought of Diego Giacometti and his Cat Butler (http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424498121/diego-giacometti-chat-maitre-dhotel.html) form that has been reproduced and sold in garden centers all across America with no repercussions to shops. Meanwhile there is a group of gallerists and foundry guys sitting in European jails for the unauthorized use of molds stored in France to produce and sell additional bronze tables in recent years, Diego passed away in 1985. Maybe it takes the provenance --of huge established values-- of the works replicated before authorities can justify taking action.

I was reminded of this thread when I passed an Asiart Inc. (http://www.ihfc.com/Index.cfm?Section=Listing&Letter=A&ID=637942) location this afternoon, where there is an entire city block of bronzes stored in a fenced location outside and visible from the street. They also have the Bronze Factory website (http://www.bronzefactory.com/) which is similar to Life Size Statue (http://www.lifesizestatue.com/) in their efforts to import and sell cheap bronze castings that include knock offs of other artists exhibited work.

I doubt any action is seriously undertaken until a group of wronged artists testify before a Congressional Committee about what these importers are doing.

[HappySculpting]

Hi Fused,

Thanks for those additional links.

Impala Lechner is the gal who made up that art fraud website and she's going after those guys stealing art work. She's taking them to court and and has had a foundry shut down because of the criminal practices.

She had several of her bronzes temp. on display at the foundry that I just went to. I saw and took lots of pics of the one she's standing next to in the link below.

http://web.mac.com/impalaart/iWeb/www.impala-lechner.com/ImpalaLechner.html

She's an excellent artist and I'm glad she's doing something about this.

Those thiefs can be looking over anyone's shoulder while posting lots of pictures from various angles and give them all the info necessary to sculpt your work in detail. But... I don't think this will change my posting style and how I like to share pictures for review.

[Impala Lechner]

To all Artists !!!
Since I am getting more and more experience with Intellectual Property rights
I highly suggest that ALL ARTISTS

1. are GETTING AN USA COPYRIGHT CERTIFICATE TODAY !
2. Look under: http://www.bronzecopyright.com/index.php?sE1=1&sE2=2
3. Take pictures during their physical working process !
4. Put the copyright symbol © on their sculpture, plus
5. Their name
6. Year of creation
7. Number of edition
8. Make a heavy copyright statement in your web site, that your art is protected (example: my starter site: www.impalal-lechner.com)
9. Join our web site: www.bronzecopyright.com I hear it all the time and we do have written comments from infringers, companies, which sell knock offs, that they look in our web site on a regular base to get information, of what is under copyright and what is not ! They will most likely NOT knock off your work, if you show your original work in the www.bronzecopyright.com web site !
10. Even for Europeans I recommand a US Copyright Certificate ! The world got very small these days. It is only US$ 30.- per sculpture.

BUT, guess what: what the copyright thieves are doing now:
they steel our designs in taking pictures in Galleries, our advertisement, our web sites, in art shows, whereever, copy them and copyright your design at the Copyright Office.
In this way they own a copyright certificate themselves, from your design !!!!

SO, in the future, if you do not protect yourself, you better hide your ART in a basement, where NO ONE can see your work !

BUT since we artists live from showing our artwork, exposing our bronzes, we have to get better protection !

Your legal rights get very slim if you can not prove your own copyright with the US Copyright Office !
If you do not own your copyright with the US Copyright Office, the infringers will prove in the end that they own your copyright ! Who comes first, gets served first !
I do not even show my work anymore before I have copyrighted it !

In the future we will create a data base where artists can protect their bronzes, maybe in just putting your web site in our bronzecopyright.com web site, so companies can have a look and see what is real and what is a copy!

This information is very serious and important for your survival as an artist !
If you do nothing you can count on the fact that your work will be copied sooner or later.

REMEMBER, some of us, ONE single artist has up to 30 sculptures as copies on the market !

The cheap bronzes and bronze copies are a multi million DOLLAR BUSSINES !
From my own experience I know if WE AS ARTISTS do not ACT, ORIGINAL ART will be rare in the future !
We can be VERY FORTUNATE if we pull this challenge off !
In Europe we have nearly NO COPIES anymore on the market, BUT in the USA there are plenty !
Some of the knock off companies are already BUYING artists to work for them and they sell bronzes from artists and the fakes simultaneously!
Do you want to be employed in future to make any money at all, since money makes the world go around and NOT ETHICS ?!

So, take action ! GET PROTECTED !

Just one more story: all the artists in the web site www.bronzecopyright.com do have a US Copyright Certificate, we raided several companies in Germany, the infringers are on criminal and civil charges in Germany, now, after nearly TWO YEARS being in court with them, they came up fake copyright certificates from a “Thai Artist”. He created 33 bronze sculptures from Jane DeDecker, Desmond Fountain, Gary Lee Price, Victor Issa, Rosalind Cook, Dawn Weimer and Richard MacDonalds.

Artists, please take the situation serious !
Impala Lechner, Bronze Artist www.impala-lechner.com

[HappySculpting]

Thank you Impala for all that info. I'll take it to heart and get the necessary copyrights. I have two questions for you:

Why is it best to copyright within 3 months?

Are some of the thiefs doing their sculpting by use of pictures from the internet that they download into high tech machinery that reads all the info and then sculpts it in 3D? If so, wow, I thought they just look at the pictures and steal the idea and do it all by hand.

I can see why it's so important to get the copyright on it before the thiefs do and then you have to prove that you did it first.

Thanks again for the huge effort and expense that you have taken to fight back.

How can a person join your website? I couldn't find any link to actually join.


~Tamara

[fritchie]

I think we should continue to post pictures here freely, regardless of what scoundrels may be doing. Sculpture is a visual medium (too bad it's awkward to put up 3d pics), and the pictures, from various angles, are essential to let others know what we have done. Running from problems does not solve them.

[Impala Lechner]

OFF COURSE, we need to show our sculptures where ever we can !
BUT, what I was trying to say: DO NOT SHOW YOUR WORK BEFORE YOU HAVE A COPYRIGHT !
These people do not need various angles, I can copy any sculpture from a simple picture.
I do NOT recommand to run from the problem, I fight it in any way you can imagine !
Go to www.bronzecopyright.com
But I recommand to protect your art in any way you can !
We do live in different times now, in a fast and tiny world !
The copyright problem is one of the biggest challanges in the world economy.
Hear a book everybody in a creative business should read:
Counterfeiting Exposed, by Hopkins, Kontnik, Turnage, ISBN: 0-471-26990-5
Impala

[Impala Lechner]

Hi Tamara,
within 3 month is what the US Copyright Office recommend to copyright your work.
BUT you can COPYRIGHT your work even after years,
important is: that you copyright your work !
Send your mail to the copyright office as registrated mail !
I copyright my work before I even show it.

The infringers give to poor slaves in a Thai foundry a picture and these people sculpt it from the picture, but some foundries start doing it now from high tech machinery.

In 2003 when we raided the foundry in Thailand they copied all by eye and hand, as you can see, the copies do not have our hand writing anymore.
Even so, some of the knock offs are exact copies.

But our world is changing and these people make more money, millions, with the knock offs and they get modern machines.
Look at all the companies in the USA which still sell our copies, even we wrote them a Cease and Desist letter!
They do not care and we have to take legal actions before they stop and we will take legal action, company by company……

But, since they are informed, they are willful infringers now, which is better for us.
Since we do have all a copyright, they have to pay our lawyers and statuary damages, which are quite high.

These people have the old artist image in mind, too lazy, to poor, to spaced out, not in a business mind…….so they take advantage of us.
We need to brake that image what artists are, because in this world you do not survive anyway if you are not professional.

I hope all this makes sense, since my mother language is not American.

Impala

[HappySculpting]

Hi everyone,

Impala is at steady at work at her mission to protect artists from those that seek to replicate their hardwork illegally.

Her website is:

http://www.bronzecopyright.com/

She now has a video that shows the destruction of the bronze copies. Very powerful presentation, as you think of what it symbolizes: victory over the frauds. Many of these copies are well made sculptures and one might think it a waste to destroy, but they are illegal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JX-_faXtkY

Impala has been winning case after case, traveling to these countries, sometimes with a body guard for protection. She is one tough cookie and I'm sure she's the last thing those crooks want to see coming at them.

One can contact her via her website if they want to know how they can be of support to the cause.

~Tamara