The Coin-Operated Art Show

Or, how to build a tiny art collection with pocket change.

Malarky’s art-vending machine at Zony Mash Beer Project, New Orleans

A quick explanation of why I’m running behind on posts … the laptop that got me through the pandemic, the one I took through security as I flew back and forth from STL and SLC last year, the one that came with me to NOLA … well, it bit the dust. Then I headed into midterms. Ouch! Working on getting back to my short-lived Sunday brunch schedule. Thx for your patience!

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This weekend, we made our annual pilgrimage to Artica, a temporary autonomous zone that appears on the North St. Louis riverfront for a few days each fall. (If you’re not an Artican, you can learn more via Thomas’s oral history project, Artica Ever After.)

On our drive up 55 North, we swerved over to Oxford, Mississippi and hit Square Books and its sister shop, Off Square. These are dangerous bookstores; I never leave empty-handed. This time, I literally emptied my wallet, dropping my spare change in a gumball machine labeled “Quotes, Tokens & Thingies.” It spit out a bubble containing a silver beaded necklace and a slip of paper with a Shmuel Niger quote: “A good library is a palace where the lofty spirits of all nations and generations meet.”

“Quotes, Tokens & Thingies” at Off Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi

That gumball machine introduced me to a writer I didn’t know, softened my guilt for buying new books, and provided the rarest of gifts in this algorithimic age: genuine randomness/surprise.

I’ll admit to a mild obsession with coin-operated machines, including photobooths and Zoltar. One of my favorite spots in New Orleans is the corner at Zony Mash where the Malarky gallery keeps its art-vending machine.

The art-vending machine that deepened my obsession — I can’t stop thinking about it 10 years later — was Temitayou Ogunbiyi’s "Lovely Love Text Message Books,” from the The Pulitzer Foundations’s 2013 exhibit The Progress of Love.

(Courtesy of the University of Kansas Onisha Market Collection)

Love was a spectacular exhibit from wall to wall, but the experience that really knocked me out was walking down the long hallway in the museum’s basement and spotting a snack machine fille with what looked like zines. It was something more wondrous: tiny booklets based on 1950s and ‘60s Onitsha Market pamphlets, which you could buy for $1 apiece.

As Hyperallergive explained, these booklets traditionally cover “all sorts of questions and themes, including how to find a husband”; Ogunbiyi mashed that tradition up with “quick communication booklets” that’ve become popular in Lagos since the early 2000s, which give readers sample text messages for marriage proposals or Easter greetings. “Ogunbiyi considers the lengths that those in search of love will go to for answers,” Hyperallergic wrote, “and what price they will pay, both literally and metaphorically.”

The Art-o-Mat … and its Earthy Predecessor

Clark Wittington, creator of the Art-o-Mat, is generally credited as the father of the art vending machine — but there was an earlier iteration, and it was more practical and human, just like the Onitsha Market booklets:

Ad from The El Paso Times, 1950

“F.O.B.” is a shipping term, not the name of the manufacturer. There’s a reason why the advertiser was coy about who they were and where they were: these machines were illegal in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s.

The Van Nuys News, December, 1949

Still, they were apparently pretty ubiquitous, along with other kinds of automated entertainment, as you can see in this Sherriff’s Auction notice:

The State, September, 1949

I have no idea if these machines inspired Whittington to convert his first vintage cigarette machine to an art-dispener in 1997, long after the last illegal art dispenser had been hauled out of tavern by the cops. But people love Art-o-Mats so much, Whittington decided to make them his life’s work. There are now 125 Art-o-Mats all over the country, stocked with the work of 400 different artists—I’m sure some obsessed nut is working through all these map pins in an attempt to visit them all.

There’s an Art-o-Mat in New Orleans, in The Old No. 77 Hotel & Chandlery that I have yet to visit, a “mid-50s vintage green patina 22 column machine,” sourced from a warehouse in Baltimore and stocked with work by New Orleans artists. If you visit, I’d recommend throwing $5 into that machine to get your NOLA souvenir, rather than a dusty bag of beignet mix or a dopey French Quarter T-shirt.

Insert Coin, Twist Handle, Get Art

Even though people love art-vending machines, it’s actually rare for them to last 20-plus years. The Blumenautomat-Gallery, which repurposed a Berlin florist’s flower-vending machine and dispensed tiny sculptures, now only exists as a one-page history online. The Mystery Soda Machine is, sadly also no more. Some projects are designed to last just a few months, like this vending machine Atlas Obscura stocked this summer that spit out “rare and unexpected treats from the American South.”

Portland artist Stephanie Pierce kept her automated art project, the 24-Hour Churh of Elvis, going for more than three decades, but had to shutter it in 2013.

(Salem Statesman-Journal, November 1989)

But there are plenty of projects filling the void left behind by the ones that’ve dissapeared, incluidng Art-to-Go, The Poetry Machine, The Poetry Vending Machine Project, Vancouver Vending Co., and Good Things Vending. Oh! And there’s a new Art-o-Mat in Baton Rouge. I might just become that aforementioned nut that has to visit every Art-o-Mat in America, starting with my local machines.

A Penny for your Thoughts

First: a very belated thank you to new subscribers Matt T., Gena B., Margie K., Lenovee, Jimmy, Miaela S., Calf Creek, and Melissa P. You are new here, so I’ll say: I’m traditionally a once-a-week poster, but the past couple o’ months have been a bit frenetic. As I mentioned in the first para, we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming going forward.

Second: if you have thoughts/feedback, always happy to hear it. Posts are inspired by what I encounter in the world and what catches my interest in the present moment, but I’m always open to new ideas/topics. This newsletter is free to all, and paid subscribers are very appreciated, but I also value the time and attention of all readers … thanks to all of you.

If you want to support the work I’m doing here, you can kick me a little bit of spare change for coffee or leave a li’l tip here. There’s another post coming this week (because I owe y’all some words), and to tease it: it’s Halloween-themed, huzzah!