This weekend was the opening of the custom birdhouse show “Home tweet home” at Genuine Artikle in NY. Looks like some great pieces turned out for the show, it was a pleasure to be included among so many strong works.
Pics of the show pieces can be seen here
I’m not a probability expert, but something kind of crazy occurred at the show as wel. A fear I think all artists have tucked deep in the back of their heads from time to time. I’ll let the pictures explain a bit further:
“Intergalactic house of Moetotts”
by Josh (f+) Pearce
“Star Light Bright”
by Kat Brunnegraff
The old adage “Great minds think alike” comes to mind.
WHAT ARE THE ODDS!?!?! We even used the same birdhouse design!? I picked mine up at Micheal’s, and I would guess that she did the same, but there were like 50 birdhouses to choose from (also, these are the only 2 gazebo style houses in the show) CRAZY!
For clarification, there is no way either of us could have known about the intent of our piece. I didn’t show mine to anybody, and
“Kat Brunnegratt” returns 0 results on Google, so this is complete coincidence
It turns out, her name is Kat Brunegraff, is an ohio based artist does some very cool and fun art that appears to be influenced by old school animation. her blog is here
, but it raises an interesting and (I see it as) slightly unfortunate issue for both of us.
Here’s the part were I ramble:
First of all, I priced my piece $100 less than Kat’s because I really wanted to make an affordable and functional piece that had a good chance of selling in these tough times. Not to discredit her technique or execution, but speaking strictly by surface opinion, due to the similarity of the pieces, one could see this as “undercutting” her piece’s price point. That sucks.
The second thing is now there are two very similar pieces at the same show, so I feel that to a small extent some of the “uniqueness” of the respective pieces is lost to the other for the viewer, which is a shame because I believe we are both very proud of the work we did on these.
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I don’t know if I should legitimately be bummed or not, but I am a little bit. For both of us. Should I be?
im over it. 
At the end of the day, kudos to Kat for creating a very charming and interesting birdhouse, and a big thanks to Laura and everyone at Genuine Artikle for another great show!
