Once the Star Wars Lego project died thanks to Lucas Licensing, I started to think about what my next project should be. In March I thought that perhaps I could make money by “selling money.” This started innocently enough by searching through what other artists were doing with US currency. Some were folding it like origami, others were painting or drawing dollar bills but no one was creating images of money based on actual photos.

I thought it might be easier to scan the bills into Photoshop and then take it from there, creating collages built from individual bills. I put a $5 note on the scanner and began the project. I applaud Adobe and the manufacturers of scanning equipment for what happened next. Somewhere in the process, the software recognized that I was scanning US currency and gave me an error message, directing me to a website about the rules of reproducing our money.

I checked out the website which was really quite fascinating. There are very strict laws regarding the creation and use of images of US paper money. According to the Secret Service, color illustrations of US currency are allowed as long as:

• “The illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated”
• “The illustration is one-sided” and
• “All negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use”

Now I know that I’m not trying to counterfeit our bills but my computer system doesn’t. The law doesn’t indicate that images of our currency are completely illegal so I didn’t have to abandon the project. But it did mean setting up a copy stand and photographing the bills rather than trying to use the scanner. I borrowed my sister’s stand and started to photograph different bills. I photographed individual bills in their entirety and close-ups of various parts: the portrait, image on the reverse, and the numeric denomination in the corners. I also photographed a number of bills together, filling up the entire area.

As I continued to think about the project, I decided that adding a piggy bank could be more interesting. I didn’t think finding a piggy would be difficult. But what I found was a very shiny brass-colored piggy at a local Target. It was so shiny, I could see myself reflected in it. I bought a can of matte black spray paint and got rid of that shine. Yes, I would have preferred to paint him pink, but that was only available in a glossy finish. So I made due with my black piggy and continued to create some art.

While there are restrictions on paper money, there are no restrictions on images of coins. Therefore, I added coins to my photo list.

I also tried my hand at creating a bill from scratch – a Zero Dollar bill with the Statue of Liberty as the main portrait.

It’s been a little while since I’ve really worked on this project. I entered a print into a juried show that, sadly, was not accepted. In fact, it wasn’t well received at all which has kind of bummed me out for the time being.