Logo art!

The Free Press logo art for April Fool's Day 2009.

An Uneducated Art Review: Making money worth something

I came across an artist today who uses shredded dollar bills to make collages.

His name is Mark Wagner, and the series is called Tangled Web.

Besides the fact that the images he comes up with are incredible -- they feature dragons, giant fish, mermaids; all great literary and artistic fodder -- his work is also great because it's so off-putting... uncanny, even.

I know that American dollars have been desecrated in the past for artistic purposes (see the classic Dead Kennedys E.P. In God We Trust, Inc.). But this is the first one that I've seen that transcends the trappings of heavy-handed satirical camp, actually creating new worlds out of one of America's most loaded cultural symbols.

I mean, yeah... the spider weaving a "tangled web".... that one is hard to miss.

But what I find interesting, is that while the entire world burned down and trillions of dollars of (perceived) value went up in smoke, some dude was toiling away in his apartment the whole time; fastidiously mutilating dollar bills to create mermaids and portraits of Groucho Marx.

I know nothing about the artist himself, and I plan on keeping it that way. It could be that he is actually an out of work bond trader who did it all on his laptop in the midst of a crystal meth bender.

The way I prefer to see him is as totally oblivious. Like, while Jack Cafferty and Chris Matthews were screaming about the banking system screeching to a halt, Mark Wagner was watching old Marx Brothers movies in his mother's basement and "just making pictures."

I'll bet he's already getting tired of answering questions about the art:

"How much that set you back, anyways?" Or "Jesus, in this economy? You must be crazy."

Googlesque

The Free Press logo art for St. Patrick's Day 2009.