For immediate release
Lake Oswego artist is hanging paintings around town and hoping people steal them
The first one was gone in less than a day.
LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. — November 2026 — Since late October, Lake Oswego artist norville Parchment has been hanging framed, spray-painted portraits around town with one goal. He wants them stolen. The piece is called the Mona Lucy, a new Mona Lisa built with features borrowed from Lucille Ball. Each frame carries the letters L.H.O.O.Q., a nod to Marcel Duchamp’s 1919 mustached Mona Lisa.
The first one he hung disappeared within 24 hours.
“I make the Mona Lucy, somebody steals it, and then it’s finished,” Parchment said. “The thief is my collaborator. I just don’t get to meet them.”
Each piece is numbered and comes with a certificate of authenticity. A QR code on the back sends whoever took it to the project site, Thank You for Stealing the Mona Lucy, at norville.art, where they can register their Mona. The site also covers Duchamp and the creative act, and the books behind the project.
The Mona Lisa itself got famous in part because someone stole it. When it went missing from the Louvre in 1911, people lined up to look at the empty spot on the wall. Parchment is interested in how a face becomes something everybody knows, and what happens when you mash two of those faces together and leave the result on a fence.
“Lucille Ball is about as recognizable as a face gets,” he said. “So is the Mona Lisa. I wanted to see what people do with both at once.”
Parchment spent more than 20 years as an agency creative director, then led user experience at Cisco.com and Intel.com. He co-founded the design consultancy Project Wildflower. His art is on Instagram at @art_norville.
Contact: norville Parchment · norville@project-wildflower.com · norville.art/press
— end —