When we create a photograph, a painting, a story, a piece of music… who owns the work? I don’t mean actual possession. Nor do I mean the results of a financial investment, an exchange of currency. The work, the idea, the visual stimuli, the idea, the memory? Who owns these things? The person who created it? The audience that views it? The person who purchase it? The universe that provided the material for the artist to craft? All of us? None of us?

The idea of “public domain” can be stringently applied to any work that no longer carries a trademark or a copyright. But in a broader sense, isn’t anything we artist create in the public domain? I of course wish to draw some benefit from the work I create. A purchase is nice, a comment from a reader or viewer, also nice. But what value do I draw from the anonymous consumption of my work? Is it some karmic bank account that is growing in value, like a cosmic IRA? And do I create for any reward at all? Certainly my internal thoughts, my ideas, my ego, they all benefit from my practice. And maybe that’s all I need to worry about. I make images, I type words, I speak and joke and sing, and that is all in the public domain, before evaporating into the ether.