"The dollar bill is publicly valued, and I like making it privately valuable -- or to reflect how rich the person is that I'm depicting." The rich people who buy fine art, I love them, they give me a chance, but I like that mere mortals can enjoy it as well -- I couldn't afford to buy my own art work," he explains. "I stumbled onto a niche benefit using the one dollar bill," he says. Legal tenderWagner has worked with other types of U.S. dollar bills and foreign currencies, and while he says he loves the colors and variety they offer, most of his work is now done with the one dollar bill because of its versatility and abundance. Common denominatorOriginally a printer and specialist book binder who has long dabbled in collage, Wagner first started cutting up dollar bills as material for his art in 1999 after he went looking for the most "common" paper he could find to use for one particular piece.

Source: CNN July 04, 2016 04:41 UTC