SF Pride rainbow laser art installation 'Welcome' prompts charge of plagiarism
SAN FRANCISCO -- A battle is brewing between the creators of the SF Pride laser light art installation "Welcome" and an artist who insists the people behind the display copied her work.
To some, it may look like simple beams of colored light. But for visual artist Yvette Mattern, it is her signature work -- inspired in part she says -- by a real-life rainbow she saw dancing across a pond in Massachusetts.
It was later spurred to life by the election of President Barack Obama.
"I related very much because, you know, I'm mixed race like Obama and I think a lot of people of color were just jubilant to see something like this," said Mattern
Titled "Global Rainbow," Mattern first displayed the laser light installation in 2009, projecting across downtown Manhattan on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. She took her work all over the world, touting it as a symbol of diversity.
"I just wanted to do a work that had nothing to do with division. I wanted to do a work that had everything to do with inclusion and togetherness," explained the artist.
Until one day last year when she says someone told her about a laser light display in San Francisco -- a miles long beam of rainbow colored lasers called "Welcome."
"I was very upset, you know? 'Cause I was like, 'This is my work. Like, what's going on?" said Mattern. "And, honestly, it had always been a dream of mine to present my work in San Francisco. So it was kind of like a double whammy."
It was presented by Illuminate, the non-profit art collective behind the Bay Lights, the massive LED light sculpture that once sparkled along the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
Mattern says she reached out to its founder, adamant that they directly credit her for the Pride display which she says she has a copyright for.
"She's wrong. She doesn't know the truth. I know the truth of this installation," said Illuminate founder Ben Davis. "You'll see hundreds and hundreds of photos from across the city that have a power, a potency and a context of San Francisco that are just not even close to anything she's ever done."
Davis insists he has done nothing wrong, and pointed to the group's website which lists Mattern as "an artist who came before us."
It was little consolation to Mattern -- who says she has lawyered up and sent letters asking Illuminate to pull the project.
"I was like no! I'm not a historical contributor. This is my work!" insisted Mattern.
"I think many works in the realm of art can be considered similar. But does someone own the right to take a laser beam, turn it into color and say, That's mine and no one else in the world can do it?' I don't think so," said Davis.
Copyright attorney Lawrence Townsend says ideas are not protected under the law, but the way an artist expresses it can be.
"It's discerning the difference between the--again--the idea which anybody should be able to do of projecting the rainbow colors on the sky with lasers, and what is actually something beyond that is original expression that is something that the artist created that goes beyond that mere idea," said Townsend.
"If he does not credit me as the artist of this work, I will take him to court, said Mattern. "Because I will not accept this. I just won't."