Sculpted Paper Skull Made of 11,000 One-Dollar Bills

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Scott Campbell is a New York artist known for making elaborate laser cut carvings and sculpted works out of stacks of one dollar bills; his new exhibit in L.A. at the OHWOW gallery features a completely new work made out of newly minted sheets of cash money. A 3D skull sit inside a box in this two-foot-stack of currency sheets (worth $11,000), and it looks like a morbidly expensive mesh of tattoo imagery and topographical maps. Via Notcot:

Campbell expands his use of cut currency, sourcing uncut sheets of dollars directly from the United States Mint, to create large, intricate work with a sunken relief effect. One piece uses $11,ooo worth of currency sheets to create an over two-foot cube, into which a three dimensional skull is carved-out. These works employ the familiar blue-collar vernacular of tattoo flash-boards – a skull smoking a cigarette, a skeleton’s hand in a provocative gesture, a single eye emitting a penetrating ray – and highlight the irony that exists within that imagery.

He also has other monetary sculptures that feature the same macabre theme of skeletons and skulls:

Everything looks delicate and terrible and beautiful, all at the same time– I wonder how he managed to suspend the sheets of money so evenly next to one another, since some sheets look like they have mere millimeters of air evenly spacing the paper. Gorgeously conceived and executed, in my opinion! [Via Notcot.]

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