JSG Boggs drew his very first bill in 1984 while sitting in a Chicago bar. The artist was doodling on a napkin, and the waitress liked his drawing and asked if he would pay his 90-cent bill with it instead of real money, and the "Boggs Notes" were born.
That was the start of JSG Bogg’s weird tale of "economic" art and later on, legal troubles. Boggs began "spending" his very own bills for face value - he would draw an elaborate note denominated $10 in exchange for $10 worth of goods.
Soon after, no doubt in part because of the high quality of illustrations, Boggs notes became very collectible - however, Boggs refused to sell his notes directly to collectors. He preferred to exchange his money for goods, at restaurants, bars and shops, and then tell the collectors where to hunt for the Bogg notes. In a way, Boggs likened his economic transaction as a performance art.
Boggs made his own versions of US as well as other countries’ banknotes - although instantly recognizable as "funny money" (one of his most famous notes was created for the Florida United Numismatist convention shown above, complete with "IN FUN WE TRUST"), Boggs were repeatedly arrested for counterfeiting in the USA and abroad.
“Boggs Bills” typically feature the same size, coloration, design patterns, and symbols as the bills he is inspired by, but with a few noticeable variations usually aimed at comedic effect. There is no evidence that he has ever attempted to pass his bills off as authentic currency, or that his “bills” have been mistaken for the real thing.
Nonetheless, in 1991, U.S. Secret Service agents seized 15 of Boggs’ pieces from an exhibit in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The following year, Secret Service agents seized the majority of Boggs’ remaining work from his studio, home, and office at Carnegie Mellon University. In neither instance, however, was Boggs charged with counterfeiting. In 1993, Boggs sued for the return of his work, claiming the seizure of his work violated his First Amendment right of free speech. He argued the counterfeiting statute was written too broadly, allowing law enforcement officials to apply it to works never mistaken for actual currency. His legal efforts were unsuccessful. Both trial and appellate courts upheld the seizure of Boggs' work, finding that the federal statute served the government interest of preventing counterfeiting without unduly restricting free expression. To this day Boggs has never been charged with counterfeiting, yet his work remains in the possession of the Secret Service.

J.S.G. Boggs has spent over $250,000 in hand-drawn variations on the local currency wherever he is based. After eating a meal, selecting an item, or receiving a service, he attempts to exchange his hand-made bills for goods and services that he wishes to purchase. Each transaction requires the recipient to consider whether his art is desirable enough to replace the money that they may then have to spend out of their own pocket in order to acquire Boggs’ work. There is a further component to the transaction when collectors of Boggs’ work have to personally negotiate with the owners of the bills in order to acquire his pieces. If someone buys this work outright, Boggs also includes the change he gets back, his purchase receipt and other ephemera from the transaction.
Though there is always a clear disclosure that he is exchanging art for goods and services, Boggs has repeatedly been arrested for counterfeiting in the USA and abroad. The U.S. Secret Service has raided his home and confiscated much of his artwork but he has never been formally charged.
Although the United States Treasury Department has very strict and serious laws about the counterfeiting of currency, there is one law that is above them that they seem to recognize and that is the artists freedom of expression.
James Stephen George (J.S.G.)  (born Steve Litzner) is most famous for his hand drawn, one-sided United States bills that he then exchanges for goods and services just like real money. His drawings show the hand of a master draftsman so much so that he has been arrested for his counterfeiting in England and Australia. Boggs was acquitted in both cases on the grounds that he was creating art and not forging or counterfeiting currency and trying to pass it off as such.
But Boggs’ creations are as elusive as his philosophy about the art he creates. He does not consider the drawn bank notes as money and they are commonly referred to as Boggs Notes, Boggs Bills, and Boggs Dollars. Boggs considers the art part of his work when he exchanges the bills, receives change, and receipt and goods. He then is willing to sell the receipt, change and goods as the art, not the original bill. If a collector wants a hand drawn Boggs Bill they will have to track down the lucky recipient themselves.
While Boggs art work could be considered hard to collect and esoteric he is taken seriously by the art world. The proof? His work is in the collections of the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian Institution.


Interview

EGG: How did you come up with the idea of drawing money?

JSGB: Basically, I was a starving artist living in London. In 1984, I went to Chicago to visit the Chicago Fair, and during a walk on the town I got totally lost. I stopped into this café to get directions, and while I was there I got a coffee and a donut and I started doodling on a napkin. I put a number 1 in one corner of the napkin, and just made abstract scribbles across the edge. When I got to the next corner, I did another number, and so on. For some reason, I really wanted to draw a face. And so right there in the middle of the napkin I just drew a face. When the waitress came over she said, "Why, that's the most beautiful one dollar bill I've ever seen. Can I have it?" My instant reaction was "No, you can't have it." She knew she had said something that wasn't right, and she was reaching out to try to express how much she appreciated the drawing. And so she said, "I'll give you twenty dollars for it." Again, I said, "No." And she doubled it to forty dollars for it, and I really said, "No!" She went away, looking all rejected and dejected. And I thought to myself, "What have I just done? I've just offended and insulted someone offering to support my art" -- the very thing that I was looking for. So, when she comes back with the check, it just hit me out of the clear blue sky. I reached down and grabbed the napkin and I said, "Would you accept this one dollar bill as payment?" It was just easy, it was natural.

EGG: How did this evolve as an art project?

JSGB: Once, I was an abstract painter, and I wanted to paint something real. So I started painting numbers. Then I realized that numbers are not real, they're total abstractions. So then I moved on to painting money and I thought, "Finally! I'm painting something that's real!" But money is also an abstraction; the transaction makes it real. Early on an art dealer invited me to Switzerland for an exhibition. When I got there I was sleeping on his floor, but by the time I got the project underway, I was sleeping in a five-star hotel, eating the finest food, buying the finest clothes and jewelry -- all with Boggs bills. He came to me and said that he had wanted the bills, but now I had given them all away. So, I sold him the receipts for him to track down the bills. That is how the art project works -- I use the Boggs bills as a means of transaction. I do not tell people what to do with the bills; I offer no advice. Collectors or dealers buy the receipts as proof of the transaction.

EGG: Doesn't this take the commodification of art to an extreme -- turning art into mere money?

JSGB: Most people make this mistake that my work is predominantly about money. And it's really not. I guess I could do as some others have done and just make drawings and paintings of money, hang them on the wall, and sell then in the traditional way. But I don't know that that solves anything. Galleries and museum are perfectly valid places, but there are all these people that don't go there. So what do you do about them? Do you just write them off? Or do you make some sort of effort to put art right there in their lives? I make drawings and paintings of money, actually interpretations of money, then I go out and try to spend them. It is an artistic transaction. I walk into places and say, "I am an artist, I made this, will you honor it at its proposed face value?" For example, using a $50 Boggs bill to buy a $3 hamburger and receive $47 in change. In other words, what do you think it's worth? And then this discussion ensues.

EGG: What do you see when you look at a dollar bill?

JSGB: One thing that immediately strikes me is that you've got all these white men on the money. We designed the currency and we had this great opportunity to show women, to show people of color, to show children -- aren't these people important? I mean, money is a picture of a society. The dollar represents us, and we should ask, "Are we just these dead guys?" When it comes to those things which affect our lives in the smallest of ways, it can have really the most profound effect. I'm asking people to wake up and look at this. Most people are on automatic pilot. They feel like they have no power, it's just wrong. People do have power. They just have to be asked to exercise it. You have to give them the doorway into the art. And what better way than to look at art that we use every day and probably don't even look at -- this portrait, this landscape, this abstract geometric art on a piece of paper, a limited edition print with its own, individual serial number. This is a unique work of art, and you use this every day and you don't even think about it.

EGG: But there are legal consequences to fabricating money, even if it is just an art project.

JSGB: I got arrested in London for counterfeit. I wind up in front of an judge and jury for five days in the old Bailey, and I get acquitted. So, I think, that's the end of that. Now everybody realizes I'm not a counterfeiter. Then, two years later I'm arrested in Sydney, Australia. Same charge -- counterfeiting. The judge throws the whole thing out of court, and I say fine, clearly everybody now realizes I'm not a counterfeiter. I'm an artist. So I go back to the United States and, the next thing I know, I get raided by the Secret Service. And they seize a bunch of material for an exhibition catalogue, and they destroy it. They come back the next year and now they're seizing artwork. It just started to get very complicated. The following year, they came back again and they confiscated over 1,300 works of art -- that just was intolerable. They destroyed my studio and my office at Carnegie Mellon, where I was the Fellow of Art and Ethics. I just couldn't take this anymore, so I filed suit in federal court and we have been in court since 1993. My legal bill is over a million dollars.

EGG: But why is your work not simply counterfeiting? What makes it different?

JSGB: First of all, it looks completely different from money. My work is printed on one side, not two. Some of them are orange, some are red, some are green and some are yellow. They have my thumbprint on the back. I sign my work. I put my name on my work. It's unmistakably my work, and no one would say it was printed by the United States Government or whatever. It's a work of art about money. It's not a counterfeit bill. But, meanwhile, one federal judge says that a person of average intelligence cannot distinguish between my work and genuine currency. I'm saying, "Wait a minute. We're not that stupid." We got to appeals court and two of the appeals court judges wouldn't even look at the work, and the other judge protested, saying, "How can you confirm a ruling on art if you won't look at the art?" So she demanded to see the work, and the other two judges said no. Then it went up to the Supreme Court, and they wouldn't hear the case. So at present, according to the Secret Service of the United States and a couple of federal judges, my work is illegal. This creates all sorts of complications. Christie's and Sotheby's have a ban on my work because their legal departments won't let them touch it. A lot of galleries won't show my work because they're afraid of the liability issues.

EGG: What do you want people to get from this project? What is your point?

JSGB: I want them to ask, "What is money, really?" One of the reasons money fascinates me as an image is that money is so many different things all at the same time. It's a work of art, it's a medium of exchange, it's a representation. In short, it's a representational work of art that represents many different things. It represents a society, but at the same time it's also an abstract work of art because it represents a value. For that matter, numbers are an abstraction. Once upon a time, money was a little bit more concrete because an English pound was a pound of sterling silver and a dollar was a gold coin. But no longer. A dollar is just an idea. It's just this abstract measurement. It doesn't exist. I also want people to question the value of art. The value of art is very relevant to someone who has an undeniable need to make it. But when you go up to somebody and say, "This is worth 50 dollars. Will you honor this for its supposed proposed face value?" -- it's a starting point. You have to start any dialogue somewhere. I really want to give people the opportunity to come off automatic pilot, to look at something they take for granted, to see the wondrousness of the fact that you exist. We're in a lot of trouble when you lose that ability. We sort of lose these things by little degrees. I'm trying to convey certain ideas, certain observations, and certain taps on the shoulder -- "Hey. Look at this!"