JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
What comes to mind when you see a vending machine - bad coffee, maybe stale chips? You might not be thinking about snagging a work of art, but one artist is trying to make vending machines a bit more creative. ALL THINGS CONSIDERED producer Jordan-Marie Smith brings us the story.
JORDAN-MARIE SMITH, BYLINE: At the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., next to a gift shop, there's a line forming for a vending machine.
ANA INCIARDI: OK, here it is. It's bright red with three slots. Each slot has a space for four quarters. The machine is around, is that three feet?
SMITH: That's printmaker Ana Inciardi. Four quarters won't get you a snack in her vending machines, but it will get you a colorful three-by-five print - often of food, maybe a cornichon pickle, a purple cabbage or even a vibrantly orange pumpkin.
INCIARDI: My wife is a farmer, and she will, like, come home with a bounty of vegetables, and then I just - how could I not create a hundred different prints of tomatoes?
SMITH: Those prints of tiny edibles spawned a whole community of dedicated Ana Inciardi fans. They collect and trade her $1 artworks, and there's even a subreddit for them. Right now there are 50 of her mini print vending machines across the United States. But Inciardi still gets excited about seeing them in real life.
INCIARDI: This is my first time at this museum. It's the first time seeing this vending machine. It's always really sweet watching people. But I always, like, shed a little tear the first time I see it. It's really cute. It's really, really cute.
SMITH: That day, a handful of people were waiting in line just to buy their very own mini print. Inciardi spoke with Arianne Motte.
INCIARDI: What did you guys get?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: We got...
ARIANNE MOTTE: I got a martini...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: ...Strawberry.
MOTTE: ...Which I'm very excited about. And a strawberry.
INCIARDI: Yeah, matching. Is this your first time going to a machine?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah, pretty...
SMITH: I - yeah, but my friend got me the strawberry, like, a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to go for myself (laughter).
INCIARDI: OK, good.
MOTTE: This is talk of the town.
SMITH: Motte says she and her friends gush over collecting Inciardi's prints.
MOTTE: My friends will go and then, like, get a bunch, and then we'll all, like, get our pick.
INCIARDI: Oh. People have been calling them Pokemon cards for women.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Laughter).
MOTTE: Nice.
SMITH: Inciardi got the idea to put her art in vending machines back in 2020, but it was only out of necessity - a necessity for, well, clean clothes.
INCIARDI: We have coin-operated laundry in our basement. And we couldn't find quarters anywhere because there was a big...
SMITH: I remember this.
INCIARDI: ...Coin shortage during 2020.
SMITH: Yeah.
INCIARDI: I was like, what if I had, like, a little vending machine where I could collect quarters for my laundry?
MOTTE: Oh, my God.
INCIARDI: And that was literally how I came up with it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Wow.
SMITH: The prints are deeply nostalgic to her.
INCIARDI: There was this sticker and tattoo vending machine at a supermarket near where I grew up in Brooklyn, at Key Food on 7th Avenue and Carroll Street. And I would get, like, a Batman or, like, a Spider-Man tattoo out of that thing. And then I was like, I wonder if I could get one of those to sell my little prints in there?
MOTTE: God.
INCIARDI: And now that's how I do my laundry still.
SMITH: Inciardi hopes to expand internationally but still keep the cost of her mini prints accessible. Jordan-Marie Smith, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF PINEGROVE SONG, "NEED 2") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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