CREATESPACE Help Wanted: The Complete Resource

Help Wanted: The Complete Resource documents one of the earliest large-scale art projects of the Web 2.0 era. In March 2004, while living on the streets in Del Mar, California, LG Williams inverted the artist’s role from job-seeker to employer, posting fictitious “Help Wanted” ads across Craigslist.org, then one of the largest online classified platforms. Each of five personae advertised absurd positions—seeking “skilled employees” in the arts with qualifications ranging from monitoring three television sets while petting a dog to demonstrating proficiency in Britney Spears or Outkast. What began as a last-ditch gesture of desperation quickly evolved into a month-long global exhibition staged across multiple cities, including New York, Los Angeles, London, Boston, Seattle, Dallas, Miami, Vancouver, and Honolulu. The postings drew over 5,000 replies, from résumés and job offers to hostile rants, philosophical screeds, glowing compliments, and even five unsolicited marriage proposals. Approximately 500 of these responses are preserved here, alongside exhibition data and critical commentary. Dedicated to Williams’s late mentor Wally Hedrick (1928–2003), Help Wanted stands as both artistic achievement and institutional critique—a radical experiment in which censorship, deletion, and economic precarity themselves became the medium. # # # # # LG Williams is a Los Angeles-based painter and installation artist. He currently serves as the Endowed University Instructor at The Academy of Art University and the Robert Hughes Distinguished Visual Artist-In-Residence at The Lodge in Hollywood, CA. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale Di Venezia. Williams's art and practice have been featured in major publications including Artforum, The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Japan Times, Los Angeles Times, La Stampa, Bookforum, Purple Diary, Mousse Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. PCP Press is an independent publisher specializing in avant-garde books and boundary-pushing authors. Founded in 1969 in San Francisco, the press emerged during a period when transgressive and esoteric international art books struggled to reach the wider American marketplace. Over the past three decades, PCP has established itself as a leading publisher of books, special editions, and rare publications. Their catalog features works from many of the world's most respected authors and cultural institutions, including Raymond Pettibon, Dave Hickey, Wayne Thiebaud, Bryan Reynolds, David Hawkes, Shepard Fairey, LG Williams, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, and Luscerne Kunstpanorama.