An Art Thief Wins Scholastic Art Contest!? Blasphemy!

[no-name]

I'll get to the point:
An "artist" by the name of Kasey Bowman entered an art contest with a picture stolen from this artist's DA page.
She won.
Normally, this wouldn't be pressing my buttons. However, this was not some hokey local school contest, and she in fact won several awards for said "work of art", including a trip to New York (take what you will from that).

Please read the artist's journal entry for more details and help spread the word.

http://yuumei.deviantart.com/journal/31928904/

(FYI, Ms. Bowman's high school graduation is June 10, so we don't have much time to act.)

[LOD]

When i see people in the BE section bitching about traced boobs it sort of gets on my nerves because dammit it's just fap material.

But seeing this just sickens me. She should have this black mark on her career forever for taking those achievements away from a more deserving artist.

[Bareon]

Uh.... Hmm.. position.. same... elements... same.... this isn't a trace, I'll give it that, but it IS a copy... Unless of course this could be one of those things where someone draws something that is so incredibly similar to what someone else draws... but the odds of that are kind of low... Yet I cannot discount that idea entirely.

[KeiichiRX7]

http://www.albany.k12.or.us/sahs/doc...0_handbook.pdf

I wonder if we should direct this "artist" to Page & of thier student handbook, particularly the section on integrity.

[resiz3d]

Originally Posted by liveordie83

She should have this black mark on her career forever for taking those achievements away from a more deserving artist.

She will. Chances are whenever a potential employer googles her in the future this whole fiasco will be waiting at the top of the search results.

[KeiichiRX7]

I recieved an Email back today from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards:

Thank you for bringing it to our attention that a painting submitted to The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards is a plagiarized piece. We have confirmed that a high school student from Oregon, submitted a painting that she now acknowledges was copied from another artist, Wenqing Yan. The student has apologized and her National Gold Medal and American Visions Award have been revoked. She is no longer considered a Scholastic Award winner. The work will not appear in our publications and the painting was removed from our online galleries. Contrary to information posted on various sites online, this student received no monetary prize from our program.



Plagiarism is antithetical to the core values of The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and as an organization, we take a tough stand on plagiarism. We work closely with parents and teachers to help students understand the ethical and legal implications of plagiarism. Because of the number of submissions we receive, it is impossible for us to absolutely verify the originality of each entry, but we consider this to have been an isolated episode. Students who submit to the awards are required to sign a consent form that confirms the originality of their work. In addition, our guidelines clearly state that ?[by] applying to The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, each student undertakes to (a) present original work that (i) has been created by her or himself and (ii) does not infringe upon the intellectual property rights or any other individual or entity?? We share your concern over this matter and take such issues very seriously. The student is well aware of the seriousness of this issue and has expressed to us her deep regret.



We encourage concerned observers to remember that the student involved has acknowledged that she has made a mistake, and to think about the effects that statements posted online may have. We also encourage parents to talk to their children about cyber-bullying and to read available resources on safe social networking on the Federal Trade Commission?s website at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/cons...ech/tec13.shtm.



We will shortly be announcing another student who will be honored with the American Visions Award for 2010.

[giraffe85]

What?! Social justice?! No way!

[LOD]

The way it was looking that organization was just going to sit there with it's fingers in it's ears trying to ignore this....

[Abazaba]

To be fair to the organization at hand. It really is truly impossible for them to scower the internet for each entry or even winner to find something that might be a copyright infringing. I mean honestly most of these things are so poorly staffed and they have to look over a huge number of entries to start off with. Even Major News Papers and other huge organizations that have entire departments dedicated to fact checking still have to print retractions from time to time. So it isn't that hard to understand a thing like this.

Secondly it comes to an issue of how much do they really want to deal with things like that. I mean it is sort of hard to prove things like this unless you have a literal copyright that was notarized by someone in advance. So I am sure there lawyers got to them and told them to try to ignore it if they could so as not to open themselves up to legal issues. However with such an outcry of public dissent it was impossible for them to ignore. Since it might have gotten to the point where it got real notice by the press.

Lastly you can't always assume right off the bat that something is plagiarized. I mean people have thoughts all the time that are similar or the same. Things like this happen in comedy all the time. Someone things of a joke or idea and uses it as a joke. Not realizing that someone else thought of the same thing and is also using it or that the reason they thought of the joke was because they heard it someplace else.

One never knows in these sorts of situations. She could have very well just been looking around DA for inspiration and saw this art piece. It stuck in the back of her mind and she didn't mean to copy it. I mean these sorts of things happen all the time in art. It is hard to tell that she meant to copy and literally painted it as she was looking at the screen that would be more stupidity than evil. She is a young high school kid, so odds are she just saw it one day liked it and it stayed in her mind. Then when the contest came around she painted it and thought she came up with it, not realizing she only saw it someplace else.

Also on top of that the girl in question will defiantly feel the sting of this for a long time coming. I mean her name probably got put on a list for future contests. Also as people said she will have to live with this in school and in her medium for a long time via Google and the internet which never forgets these sorts of things.

So try to remember that Imitation is the sincerest form or flattery. Thus I would really want to not think the worst of this girl. Things happen, I hope she apologizes to the artist in question either via Email or on there DA page. If that happens then you just have to let it go and move on with your life. Should she not apologize then still try to let it go, kids are dumb and do really dumb shit sometimes, even the smart ones.

[KeiichiRX7]

Abazaba, the girl copied the poem word for word, And used a highly similar character, in an identical pose. Thats a bit different from two commedians independantly coming up with the same general bit at times close to each other.

She flatly copied someone elses work, and took credit, without even seriously attempting an alternate visual interpretation. Another visual interpretation could have lended a different light to the poem. And creditting the poet would have gone a long way in gaining respectability.

What she did was not dumb but very dishonest

[no-name]

Meh...I'm just glad the bulk of this problem is over and done with.
Now, we must begin the recovery process.
Someday, I hope we'll be able to look back on this and laugh and this vain attempt to cash out on someone else's talent. XD