stars 'n' stripes 'n' vaguely menacing melons

Flag background by Chandra Glick. Melon pics by William Rowe. Snippet of still life (Dole pineapple, Breakstone yogurt, usw.) by Tom Wessellmann.

I'm curious: how do y'all feel about using other people's work in your collages? Of course, we're almost always using something that originated with another artist, but how 'bout when it's as blatant as the flag in this collage? I worried a lot about this issue in the first year or so of my work as a collage artist and did a lot of research—by which I mean that I interviewed a lot of collage artists and a lot of people whose art I was so brazenly appropriating (always giving them due credit). As you've no doubt noticed, I came to the conclusion that (a) the legal/copyright issues don't matter, what with the widespread use of "sampling" in a variety of media—and the laws are very much in flux right now—and (b) artists like it when their work, with acknowledgment, is exposed to a wider public. I figure if anyone ever objects to something I've posted online, I'll just take it down, pronto. If the artist I'm sampling wants me to change the wording of my acknowledgment, I'm happy to do that as well. Maybe it helps that I have a code, as an artist, of giving away (usually through the postal system) almost all of my originals. I've never earned a penny from my artwork, and don't plan to.

I'm always interested to hear about how other collage artists resolve these questions!

BTW, apologies for the poor quality of the scan. My trusty ol' scanner died a while back, and I've been having to use my husband's, which doesn't do color very well.