Mark wagner artist biography

American artist using banknotes

Mark Wagner (born ) is an American artist best known for meticulous collages made of United States banknotes, such as the portrait of Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke, composed exclusively of one-dollar bills, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.^[1] He is co-founder of The Booklyn Artist Alliance^[2] and has published over twenty artists’ books with Bird Brain Press and X-ing Books.^[3]

Currency collage

Since , Wagner has been using US banknotes to create portraits, abstractions, allegories, still lifes, and sculptures ranging in size from 2x3 inch smiling and frowning parodies of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington on the dollar, to the 17x3 feet Liberty, a depiction of the Statue of Liberty using slices from over dollar bills.^[4]Lisa Dennison, Chief Curator of the Solomon R.

Guggenheim Museum in New York City commends