J.S.G. Boggs literally lives off his art, drawing and spending his own currency. British pounds, Swiss francs, or American dollars come fresh from his pen each day and are traded for sundry items like plane tickets, lunches, and taxi rides.
Seated with a Rolling Rock beer and speaking with a mid-Atlantic accent, he describes a transaction he made earlier that day. “Henry Hanson from Chicago wanted to meet me at Pump Room at 12. So I explained the situation to Henry, that I haven’t spent any legal tender since the 26th of November 1987. If I cant get something with a drawing or if I can’t find somebody who’s kind enough to support me in this effort, then I just do without it. So I explained to him that I would try to buy him lunch, but if I failed to, he would have to pick up the bill.”
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When presented with the check at the end of the meal, Boggs asked the waitress, who happened to be an art student, if she’d accept the drawing of a fifty-dollar bill. She agreed. The situation became more complicated, however, when the manager refused to provide change.
This process of investigation and negotiation is what interests Boggs. “What the work is about, which is very complicated, requires that the collector has got to work, too. It’s not just a simple thing. The collector has to actually have more than money–he has to have the desire, he has to do it.”
The two bills he shows us are one-sided, one the back of a hundred-dollar bill and the other the face of a 20. All the salient features of authentic bills are reproduced, but it would be hard to mistake these for the real thing. Boggs has taken the liberty of changing such details as the wording of the motto, and he has substituted his own signature for that of the secretary of the treasury. Of the paper, which is handmade in England, Boggs says, “It’s about the closest you can get to the color of U.S. currency.”
When Boggs left the diner a few minutes later, the waitress came running after him. “She said, ‘Wait a minute! You forgot your change. The bill was only 90 cents. You gave me a dollar.’ And she made me take this dime. And it was weird. It was like all of the event was embedded in this little piece of silver. It was like watching a movie on the moon. I could see all of those events happening. I was very struck by the fact that this object contained for me a memory.” The events of that spring afternoon became the model for the hundreds of subsequent transactions Boggs has made.
