Crayons carved into the 12 symbols of the Chinese zodiac

Artist Diem Chau usually works in porcelain, but she sometimes steps it up and uses crayons as her medium. This post has lots of photos showing her carvings of the 12 symbols of the Chinese zodiac. They're on exhibit at the Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago. My favorite is the rat.

Diem Chau's crayons carved as the 12 symbols of the Chinese zodiac (Thanks, Robert!)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Art and Design

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Anonymous

carved pencils and bats at http://www.schuyff.com
Stefan Jones

Wonderful!
yri

How nifty!

In my college days, I occasionally carved pieces of chalk with fanciful designs. Don’t have them any more; after appreciating them for a while, I left each on a sidewalk somewhere on campus for some stranger to find.
ablestmage

The colors seem fairly appropriate to me. Green serpent, pink bunny, red rooster, orange tiger, etc.
Anonymous

Leaving on the original labels add a great touch. Excellent!
Anonymous

Very neat. It’s unfortunate she didn’t apply the appropriate colours to the twelve branches.
Anonymous

nice!!
and wow, peter schuyff’s pencils are so cool! thanks for the tip.
Nooscope

Crayon wax is nice stuff to carve; I like how the long aspect ratio of the crayons leads to a certain sort of composition.
mzmooaany

oh my talent abounds even with crayons!
Anonymous

Oh my, this is the best work of art ever done with crayons!
Anonymous

How cool. these look really time consuming but So cool!!!! I love all the details
nerd

If my kids got their hands on these, they’d have to up the number of zodiacal symbols to 24.
Anonymous

Magnificent!
-Kelli Lorraine
Anonymous

I thought that the crayons carving was excellent, i will look out for more of your work,
well done keep at it,
ped
fenrox

Yeah! Diem has been doing these things for years! They are the best. She used to do people and animals with no discernible theme. Its awesome that she is doing more crayon things!
Anonymous

way too much patience! awesome work! :D
Jardine

They look phallic. We should bury them for future archaeologists to find.