ARTWORK

dollar collages

"Patronage" was an installation I did for the Bay Area Awards Show at New Langton Arts in San Francisco in 1998. The 12-inch square piece was constructed out of 400 half-inch squares cut from dollar bills and installed in the Musée d'Honneur Miniscule at the entrance to the space. As a preliminary step, I solicited contributions to the Patronage Fund. For each dollar contributed, the donor's name appears once in the artwork on a piece cut from a dollar bill. Borrowing from the idea of plaques which list names of donors in the foyers of museums, this project streamlines the patronage process by cutting out several interim steps. It is a way of involving potential patrons of the arts (including those with limited financial resources) directly in the artwork. For a very small contribution, anyone can become a patron of the arts and see his or her name immortalized, not on the museum wall, but in the artwork itself. As the institutional sponsor, New Langton Arts has its name ("Langton") reflected in the number of dollars it gave to the project.