Artist’s statement

Money, very much like water, is a necessity and can serve in amazing ways. Both can be very destructive or empowering. For example, we all need water to survive, but we see the destructive forces of water in floods. In my first currency collage I used the medium to capture Governor Blagojevich who represents a dark side of the corrupt use of money for political purposes. Also, money inspires us to create and build a better lifestyle. I use the paper dollar as my medium to create portraits of known personalities who exhibit this resource.


 Short bio

Zbigniew “Zee” Kijak is an American artist, born in Poland, who currently lives in south Florida. He moved to Chicago, IL in 1978 where he lived until his move to Florida. His other art includes photography, digital photography, and acrylic painting. His work has been displayed at “Art at the Airport” at Palm Beach International Airport, Art Continuum-West Palm Beach and the “Art Boca Raton” International Art Show.


 Creating my currency collages

As a medium, I use one-dollar bills to create my collages. I carefully cut each bill into 84 pieces of the same size. Because I use both sides, I have 168 available pieces for use. I mount one of the completely cut bills between two plates of glass so I can see both front and back sides of the bill. Then I look at my photo of the subject (person) and draw horizontal and vertical lines over the image to create a grid. My next step is to determine the dimensions of the final artwork. Then I scale up from my model grid and create a grid for the final artwork on the foam board. Looking at every piece of the gridded model photograph, I find the best match of color or tone from the 168 available pieces and glue each piece onto the board. Creating currency collages is very time-consuming and requires concentration and patience. A 20” X 20” artwork takes approximately 120 to 200 hours to complete. My “Snoop” artwork took 9 months (600 hours) to complete.