Art that's made of money

Mark Wagner’s Currency Collages

Mark Wagner turns ordinary $1 bills into detailed collages, inviting viewers to look again at a familiar object and consider its relationship to money and American identity. His work also draws on the taboo of cutting up currency. Wagner says the work is not intended as a protest sign; its meaning develops both as he makes it and as viewers respond to it.

Techniques and Creative Process

• Wagner cuts bills apart with an X-Acto knife, a process he calls “dissection,” then glues the fragments together.
• He saves and sorts the scraps by shade and by distinctive elements, including Treasury signatures and images of George Washington.
• He combines the fragments into portraits, crowds, and other compositions, moving between drawn-looking details and more painterly effects.
• The materials are inexpensive compared with the time and labor involved. Wagner says he lets viewers assume the bills are the costly part.
• His works include Money Lisa, Liberty—a 17-foot work made from nearly 82,000 bill fragments—and A Very Expensive Push Broom, which uses dollar bills as bristles.
• A portrait commissioned by Time was rejected and later sold to the National Portrait Gallery.
• Wagner’s works can sell for tens of thousands of dollars, and his gallery shows often sell out quickly.

People and Contributors Featured

• Mark Wagner — artist.
• David — Wagner’s brother, a woodworker who made the broom’s wooden component.
• Amy and Henry — Wagner’s wife and young son, mentioned in the profile.
• Frank Williams — collector of Wagner’s work.
• Time — commissioned a portrait.
• The National Portrait Gallery — acquired the rejected portrait.