When Sarah Craske found a 1735 translation of Ovid’s epic Latin poem in a junk shop in Margate, England, she did something unusual with it.
She didn’t donate it to a library or put it in a display case in her house. Instead, she decided to make art out of it.
And not just any kind of art.
She made art from the 300 years of bacteria growing on the pages.
“The bizarrely beautiful images she created, star and flower shapes of hugely magnified bacteria blooming in crimson smears of her own blood, will go on display this week, in an exhibition opening at Chetham’s Library in Manchester, a free public library since 1665,” notes The Guardian. “Visitors, having inspected the scores of bacteria cultured from just one chapter of the Ovid volume, may well look nervously at the thousands of surrounding volumes.”