nina katchadourian

More about books today here on Magpie & Cake. But that's not all.

It went like this, see. I came across artist Nina Katchadourian on the Quipsologies blog. They were talking about one of her pieces (the books one - more on that in a moment)... and I then I discovered her other work. And man, there's a lot of fabulous, creative stuff going on with Nina. Here are a few of my faves...

First off, Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books project. She reorganizes books into groups so that their titles can be read in sequence. This would be a really funny (and time-consuming!) way to arrange your whole bookshelf. Talk about meta-narrative.

Another fun project is Talking Popcorn, in which a microphone was mounted inside a popcorn machine translates the popping sounds into Morse Code, which is then spoken aloud by a computer.

Genealogy of the Supermarket is a collection of 78 photos of the people who appear on common grocery products, like Aunt Jemima, Mr Clean, Chef Boyardee and the Sunmaid Raisins girl. They're arranged like a family tree, as if the supermarket was a big old homestead.

One of the most crafty projects - and also one of the most delicate - is the Mended Spiderweb project, in which Nina carefully patched up torn spiderwebs with red sewing thread (which the spiders later threw out!).

I love how diverse Nina's works are - but they all share a real sense of creativity and fun. And, they're just plain awesome.