Two decades ago, Rolling Stone followed along with a notorious counterfeiter. Today, he’s making it big in the art world
good comparison, but there aren’t really any words for that feeling,” is how Art Williams described the first time he counterfeited. A heavily disadvantaged, gifted kid from Chicago’s South Side, he learned the age-old criminal craft from his mother’s boyfriend, then took it to the next level by crafting one of the best replicas of the most secure U.S. bill ever created: The 1996 $100 New Note. At the time Williams spoke to RS, he had just served two years in federal prison.
Art finally found the AB Dick he was looking for on eBay. The seller was in Minnesota, and he drove up there only to find that the cylinder was broken. The seller wanted only three grand, which was still a great deal, so he bought it and replaced the cylinder with one from another press he bought in Cleveland.
ART CAN’T PUT HIS FINGER on exactly why he felt he was under surveillance. “Maybe it was my street sense,” he says. He was now very close to the final print run. The only ingredient he was still waiting on was fluorescent ink for his security strips, which had always been difficult to source. He’d finally found a supply company, purchased it under an alias, and was having it shipped to a safe house.
SINCE LEAVING THE HALFWAY HOUSE, Art’s son Little Art had been on a far more stable trajectory than his father. After working various jobs as a janitor, car dealer, and even an industrial press operator, he obtained his commercial driver’s license. He was now driving a truck and sharing an apartment with his girlfriend. He hadn’t seen his father in weeks and had the day off so he figured he’d drop in on his old man.
Art stammered that he’d been trying to live clean ever since his release, that nothing seemed to be working out, and that he didn’t know what else to do with himself. He could feel the weakness of his words the moment they left his mouth. Art decided on the change he would make: He would drive to Cincinnati and tell his gangster backers that they weren’t getting their product.
“All right, calm down. I understand,” said the captain. He knew Art well enough to know about his dreams of being an artist, but logically concluded that it would be best if Art himself explained to his superior why all he had for him were paintings of money. “We’ll go see him,” he told Art. “I can tell you this much,” Art added. “I will make it as an artist. I will be a great artist.” If he was going to go out swinging, he was going to swing big.
Then he dismantled the print shop at Miller Beach. Lucky for him, Little Art never told his mother about discovering that his father was counterfeiting again. “I was angry and I wanted to scare him, but I didn’t want him to go back to prison,” he says. Art had taken care of today. Now all he had to do was figure out how to support four kids and himself. A few weeks later he learned that it would be five kids when Sarah told him that she was pregnant.
After the Lacuna gig ended, Art’s old friend Eric Reid helped him secure a well-paying job painting houses. Art would paint houses all day, then return to the studio to paint his canvases. His painting, still mostly anchored in the currency designs that he loved, not only evolved but he also got faster. He taught himself how to paint with both hands and move between several canvases while his paints set.
“That someone like me could become an artist and have people like these come and buy my work. It’s beyond anything I had imagined was possible.”“Just paint,” Frank told him. “If it doesn’t work out, we can always go back to painting houses.” Art had his first doubts when he dropped his works off at the gallery, which was two miles from the Convention Center. Despite the fact that Frank and Art were paying for wall space, the gallery put his work in a back corner. But he was excited to be there and when Frank flew down the next day to join him, they met the man who had hooked Art up with the gallery space. His name was Joe Benson, and he ran an executive jet rental business in Miami.
The next morning Art hustled to retrieve his canvases from the gallery and rent easels to display them at the jet hangar while Frank and Joe Benson called everyone they knew in Miami. To help sweeten the pot, the event would be a charity auction, with half the proceeds from Art’s work going to After-School All-Stars, a charity that provides free after-school programs for underprivileged youth.
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