Hasta La Gadget!

The art of Brooklyn-based artist Mark Wagner is all about the dollar, although the whole thing is clearly worth so much more than the dollars he used to create it. Mark is known as the “Michael Jordan of glue” or “the greatest living collage artist” and he wows once again with his dollar art series.

He basically takes a dollar and another and another to create awesome collages, from portraits of Abraham Lincoln and President Obama to a dinosaur trying to claw away at an bored-looking George Washington.

The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America. Collage asks the question: what might be done to make it something else? It is a ripe material: intaglio printed on sturdy linen stock, covered in decorative filigree, and steeped in symbolism and concept. Blade and glue transform it-reproducing the effects of tapestries, paints, engravings, mosaics, and computers—striving for something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable… the foreign in the familiar.

It takes a man with true talent to do what Mark does all the time. I can definitely say not a single dollar went to waste in his latest masterpieces.

[via Colossal]

Different pencil sharpeners result in differently-shaped and textured pencil shavings. For example, the ones that come with a handle churn out thin, coil-like shavings (which I packed into tiny bags and used as instant noodle props for my Barbie dolls when I was a kid.)

Then there’s the handier, compact sharpener that produces the kind of shavings that Marta Altes uses in her art.

The caricatures are playful, fun, and obviously creative. I wonder why nobody thought of doing this before, but then again, pencil shavings don’t really seem very appealing as an art medium at first thought.

Aside from the rad guy with the shaving mohawk, check out the rest of series featuring a lion, a ballerina, and a cool surfer dude all penciled in with shavings completing the scene.

[via Buzz Patrol]