Sitting in a Chicago diner in 1984, the artist Stephen Boggs began doodling on a paper napkin as he consumed a coffee and a doughnut. He started with the numeral 1, then transformed it into theimage of a dollar bill.

His waitress, impressed, offered to buy it. Mr. Boggs refused, but presented it in payment for his 90-cent tab. The waitress handed him 10 cents in change.

An idea was born.

For the next three decades, Mr. Boggs, better known by his artistic signature, J. S. G. Boggs, kept money on his mind. Extending the logic of the diner transaction, he painstakingly reproducedBritish pounds, Swiss francs and American dollars, with quirky deviations.

On American currency, for example, he might use the signature "J. S. G. Boggs, Secret of the Treasury," or inscribe "Kunstbank of Bohemia" on a $5,000 bill, or append the motto "In Fun We Trust."At first he created the notes one by one, a time-consuming process. Later he ran off limited-edition prints.

He presented his currency to merchants as payment for goods and services. If the bills were accepted, he asked for a receipt and, when appropriate, change. He noted the details of each transactionon the backs of his "Boggs bills," which were blank, and sold the receipts to collectors. It was up to them to track down the merchant - for a fee, Mr. Boggs would assist - and negotiate purchase ofthe note.

Mr. Boggs never sold his bills. He only spent them.

The assembled elements were, in the opinion of Mr. Boggs and his admirers, artworks, exhibited as such in galleries around the world and included in the collections of the Art Institute ofChicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.

"I create images that say things and ask things," Mr. Boggs said in the 2013 Discovery Channel documentary "Money Man." "I take them out into the real world and try to spend them, not ascounterfeits, but as works of art that ask us about the nature of money."

Law enforcement agencies in several countries took a different view. They regarded Mr. Boggs as a forger. They expressed this opinion, on several occasions, by seizing the notes or putting Mr.Boggs on trial.

The Tampa police discovered Mr. Boggs's body on Sunday in a motel near the Tampa airport. He was 62. Robert Salmon, manager of operations for the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office,said the cause of death had not been determined.

He was born Stephen Litzner in Woodbury, N.J., on Jan. 16, 1955. (He later added the names James and George.) His mother, the former Marlene Dietrich Hildebrandt, divorced his father when Stephenwas an infant, and nothing is known about him.

She joined a carnival, performed as "Margo, Queen of the Jungle," and in 1961 married a Tampa businessman, Jim Boggs, with whom she ran the Brahman Lounge, a bar and package store. She later wrotea neighborhood column for The Tampa Tribune, reporting on the doings in Brandon, the Tampa suburb where she lived.

Mr. Boggs attended Brandon High School but was expelled in his junior year. "I was accused of starting a riot in the auditorium, but it was somebody else who threw the book at the principal," hetold the journalist Lawrence Weschler, who wrote a profile of Mr. Boggs for The New Yorker in 1988 that evolved into a book, "Boggs: A Comedy of Values," published in 1999.

Over the years, Mr. Boggs, who leaves no immediate survivors, traded his bills for goods and services, from candy bars to motorcycles, whose worth he estimated at several million dollars.

In the mid-1990s, when Worth magazine asked him to design a note using the Treasury Department's new guidelines, Mr. Boggs produced a $100 bill with the image of Harriet Tubman as a young girl,anticipating by 20 years the announcement that Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson as the new face of the $20 bill. In 2001, he ran off a series of 100,000 plastic Sacagawea dollars, stamped with hisown mint marks and paid for with a $5,000 Boggs bill.

As Weschler told artnet News by phone:

To read the complete article, see:
J.S.G. Boggs, Who Negotiated Purchases With Drawings of Money, Has Died at 62(https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jsg-boggs-money-artist-died-62-828554)

To read the complete article, see:
J.S.G. Boggs, Artist, Dies at 62; He Made Money. Literally.(www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/arts/design/jsg-boggs-dead.html?_r=0)

To read earlier New York Times articles, see:
Exploring New Dimensions in Realm of the Coin(www.nytimes.com/1991/11/17/nyregion/exploring-new-dimensions-in-realm-of-the-coin.html)
The Long Arm of the Law Reaches Into the Gallery(www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/nyregion/art-the-long-arm-of-the-law-reaches-into-the-gallery.html)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
NUMISMATIC LITERATURE AT MEMPHIS (http://coinbooks.org/esylum_v04n22a09.html)
BOGGS IN BERLIN (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v04n23a12.html)
BOGGS/HIPSCHEN ART EVENT (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v05n42a04.html)
UPDATE: MONEY ARTIST J.S.G. BOGGS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v08n15a17.html)
J.S.G. BOGGS EXHIBIT OPENING IN SEPTEMBER (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v09n35a09.html)
WORKS BY MONEY ARTIST J.S.G. BOGGS EXBITED IN BEIJING (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v13n34a19.html)
THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL'S SECRET LIFE OF MONEY (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n10a19.html)
VIDEO OF MONEY ARTIST J.S.G. BOGGS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n32a26.html)
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: AUGUST 10, 2014 (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n33a08.html)
SELECTIONS FROM NUMISMATIC AUCTIONS SALE #58 (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n48a31.html)
CONSIDERING THE CONTROVERSIAL J.S.G. BOGGS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n34a18.html)
THE HIDDEN MESSAGES OF J.S.G. BOGGS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n35a20.html)