STORY UPDATED AFTER CLAIMS ART WAS COPIED

An exhibit at Gallery 21 in Balboa Park’s Spanish Village Art Center has been taken down after the gallery discovered the paintings were not, as stipulated in its contract, original artwork, the gallery said.

Rosa Ruiz, the director of Gallery 21, said in a statement issued Tuesday: “It has recently come to light that the works in the Gallery 21 show ‘Gathering of the Goddesses’ are not truly originals by artist Jody Abssy as represented to us, but plagiarised (sic) copies from existing works. Gallery 21 and Spanish Village Art Center do not in any way condone plagiarism. This show has been immediately removed. The guest artist has been banned from participating in any G21 or SVAC shows in the future. We apologise (sic) for her frankly appalling behavior, and are formulating measures to more closely guard against this in the future.”

The statement is posted on Gallery 21’s doors in

Spanish Village Art Center and was posted Tuesday on the social media platforms run by Gallery 21 and Spanish Village Art Center.

Ruiz said Tuesday that she and a representative of Spanish Village Art Center met with Abssy on Tuesday to inform her about the decision to take down the exhibit, which was scheduled to be on display through today.

The issue came to light after fans of artist Jo Jayson noticed similarities in paintings featured in the exhibit and pieces by Jayson, a New York-based artist known for painting goddesses as part of her “Goddess Chakra” series.

Monday, Jayson contacted the gallery and several staff members at the U-T, which published a story March 11 online and on B1. The story was written by columnist Karla Peterson, who spoke by phone to Abssy while the artist was greeting visitors at Gallery 21.

In a statement emailed to the U-T Wednesday, Jayson said: “I was appalled to witness the blatant and, quite frankly, crude plagiarism of my painting and many other artists’ works that Ms. Jody Abssy has recently showed to the public. No artist should disrespect another artist in this manner, not only by not asking permission to copy their work, or giving any credit to the artist’s original but instead passing off her paintings to her audience and the public as her own ‘inspiration’ and ‘creations.’

On Tuesday, the U-T reached out to Abssy, a local artist who was a longtime high-school art teacher. She said she would prefer not to offer a statement.

But late Friday afternoon, Abssy issued a statement, saying: “When it came to some of the 30-plus other goddesses, I did turn to iconic images that exist and incorporated them in my work in ways I felt were original. My intention was to honor these goddesses in ways that were known already. I had no intent to plagiarize defraud or misrepresent any other artist’s work as has been claimed.”

As a matter of transparency, the original online version of the article still appears online at the end of this updated report.