Pennies are altered with the addition of small stickers, each sticker voicing a wish or desire (some based on my own wants, others based on wishes that I perceive others to have). Some examples of such wishes are "I wish we would treat one another as equals." and "I wish this war would end." The pennies are left penny side up, sticker side down, on the sidewalk such that passer-bys will happen upon them and pick them up. I have become more and more disillusioned with showing my art solely in the gallery setting and want to reach out to a larger audience. This project seeks to take my art to the streets so that people can come upon it in a happenstance manner. I have always loved the connection between pennies and wishes and feel that pennies are overly neglected. They are generally seen as worthless or worth very little. Yet we associate them with good fortune, both in regards to thinking ourselves lucky for finding them and in regards to bestowing wishes upon them and tossing them into fountains in the hopes of realizing our desires. I have created several works based upon the idea of Spent Wishes incorporating pennies for these reasons, and this piece is a continuing exploration into those themes. With this work, I hope to get people thinking about their own needs and desires while encouraging them to actively participate in the world around them. Writing down personal wants and desires and tossing them away can be very cathartic. Thus, this is a creative commons project; go ahead and put some of your own wishes on pennies and place them around for others to find. Feel free to use this project as a means of social commentary - many of my "wishes" are political in nature and question the status quo. If you do decide to participate, I would recommend placing pennies where it is dry so that the stickers aren't damaged. If you do decide to become a part of Wishes, the Penny Project, and you post it online, please link to this web page somewhere on your penny page. Creative Commons license:
Wishes, the Penny Project by Jennifer Weigel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to check out the Penny Project blog. Here is a template that you can print to label paper when creating your wishes if you like. It offers the web address of the Wishes blog so that penny-finders can learn more about the project, check out other wishes and report found pennies.
