Quarters

I started collecting red quarters after I got one as a part of my change after buying a book from Borders about four years ago. Following that red quarter I discovered eleven more quarters that had been colored red either with sharpie or red paint. Following the twelfth red quarter I found three brown coins and one green and black. This all took place during the span of about one year. I haven't found any since.

The thing that strikes me most about these quarters is that they all suggest some kind of authorship. They are the intersection between the handcrafted and the serial. Each of 16 different people (assuming they all have different authors) chose to commit the same, very specific act, to deface metal currency. And before painting the opposite side of any of these coins, before putting it back into circulation, he or she had to wait for it to dry.

I scanned these quarters, printed them out, and made an artists book from them. I used a simple accordion fold with one coin on each page organized by year. Each page reveals the heads on one side and the tail on the opposite. The cover for the book is meant as a quotation of the box in which I've kept these quarters for the past four years.