UW–Madison alumna and Philadelphia-based artist Stacey Lee Webber was recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning, speaking about her work transforming spare change into valuable, coin-based art.
For nearly two decades, Webber, who earned her MFA from the School of Education’s Art Department, has used reworked coins and bills into jewelry and sculptures made entirely of money.
“I’ve gotten good at just working with that little disc of metal,” she says.
“The part that really took off and that was a snowball effect, with coins and money and working with it, is just the relationship everyone has with it,” she adds. “It started to have a life of its own, where the ideas kept coming and coming.”
While some her work explores weighty topics, such as the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, other works are playful and lighthearted in nature. “It’s like Ben Franklin as a clown, and that’s funny,” she says.
To learn more about Webber’s work, watch the full CBS Sunday Morning interview.