Art swap in the cards at library

Beatrice Cook invested an hour capturing the image of a ferret on paper the size of a baseball card, only to promptly swap the ferret for a cat.

"I just like making art in general, and knowing I can give my art to other people is a nice feeling," said Beatrice, a 15-year-old home-schooler.

Beatrice likes to make and trade cards at least once a week at the Athens-Clarke County Library, where a group of teens and younger children gathers after school and practices a cross between baseball-card collecting and art curating.

The rules are simple. To get a card, you must first make your own. Then, you can start trading.

So far, Beatrice has more than 100 one-of-a-kind masterpieces.

Her friend, Daisy Bray, isn't far behind, though she's not necessarily trying to collect the most.

"I just like seeing everyone else's kind of art; there're so many styles that people do," Daisy said.

Artist trading cards, or ATCs, have been around more than a decade, since a Swiss artist showcased 1,200 cards in his Zurich gallery in 1996 and invited fans to make their own.

Art groups from Philadelphia to San Francisco make and trade the cards, and the hobby even has a publication, ATC Quarterly, which connects traders across the globe.

Trading card artists use all different kinds of materials to fill the 2.5 by 3.5-inch paper canvas. No card is the same and the goal is to be as creative as possible.

Some budding local artists have cut out family pictures and rigged the card to have a 3-D effect.

Others make collages or draw cartoons, said Natalie Wright, a librarian who oversees youth programming.

"You can put anything on an artist trading ca

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