Conman or Artist?

  Stephen Boggs was an unusual man by any standards.  Although he was an artist, he didn't sell his work in the usual manner.  In addition, his art bordered on fraud if it didn't remain hanging on the wall.

Stephen Boggs began is career in 1984 while sitting in a diner.  While doodling on a napkin, he turned the number 1 into a one dollar bill.  The waitress offered to buy his artwork but he refused.  In stead he offered the hand drawn picture as payment for his coffee and doughnut.  She accepted it and even gave him a dime in change.

Over the years, he drew American dollars, British pounds, and Swiss Franks but he every bill he created has something on it to indicate it wasn't real such as "In Fun We Trust".  He offered the finished bill to a merchant who had the choice of accepting it or rejecting it.  If the merchant accepted it, he'd ask for a receipt and change.  He used the receipt to keep track of where every piece of artwork ended up.

If anyone contacted him to buy a piece of art, he'd give them the name of a merchant who accepted it and help broker a deal but he never directly sold a piece of his work to anyone.  Many of his bills ended up at the Art Institute in Chicago, the Modern Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

On the other hand, he was arrested, charged, and tried numerous times as a forger in several different countries because he'd use the "fake" money to pay for things.  He always insisted he was not a counterfeiter even when the Secret Service confiscated over 100 pieces of his work.

His early life was that of being raised by a single mother after she divorced his father but she did remarry a Tampa Business man after working in a Carnival.  Stephen didn't graduate from high school because he was expelled for supposedly starting a riot.  He claims it was someone else who hit the principal with a book.

He tried going to several different colleges to major in Accounting but finally ended up pursuing art at Camden Art Center where he produced conceptual drawings mostly of variations of his signature or numbers.  So in 1984, he began creating money and tried displaying some of it.  In 1986, he showed an oversized pound note that sold for $1500 pounds and in the process attracted the attention of a Swiss Art dealer.

The Swiss appreciated his talent and accepted his drawings as legal tender so he soon lived in the best five star hotels and ate at the finest restaurants. Unfortunately when he tried using his displaying his notes in the UK, he was arrested. 

At one point, he planed to print off $1,000,000 worth of his bills to release into the local economy but he was prevented from doing so.  He even went so far as to sue to get his confiscated art back from the government but the case was dismissed.  Mr Boggs passed away a couple of years ago at the age of 62.  He was found dead in a motel room.

Many recognize him as an artist genius while others claim he stopped one step short of being a con artist.  I don't know but I figure if people accepted his money in payment for supplies it was their choice as long as they didn't spend it.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear. Have a great day.