Title:  “Right on the Money” created at The Bob Blackburn Printmaking Studio in edition of 10. 

 

A two-dollar confederated bill I saw in a book entitled “The Color of Money” by John W. Jones inspired a graphite drawing from which I created this lithographic edition. This image is also apart of a body of work entitled “Old Money”.

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This money was used throughout the southern states such as Georgia, Florida, Virginia, Tennessee and others during the 1800s. These bills had images of slaves picking cotton and doing other manual labor. 

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I was in my fifties before I saw one of these bills. I’ve always known that we’ve had a long history with money in this country; however, that was the first time that I’d seen that kind of proof in black and white. Therefore: I decided to create a drawing of the two-dollar bill with a branch of overlapping cotton.

 

Money actually was made from cotton in the physical sense as well as economically. It was only natural to put them together in this way.