Year Of The Snake @ Giant Robot

Serpent (115) 2013
Carved carpenter's pencil, wood & graphite
5 7/8"h x 1/4"d x 5/8"w
$850.00

Kick off the Lunar New Year with a "Year of the Snake" art show at GR2!  This has been a running tradition for the past 5 or 6 years, I'm excited to be a part of it this year.  I won't make it to the opening, but I'll be there in spirit.

YEAR OF THE SNAKE
Feb 2 – 20th, 2013 GIANT ROBOT 2
2062 Sawtelle Boulevard
Los Angeles CA 90025
310 445.9276
Opening Reception:
Saturday, Feb 2, 2013
6:30 – 10:00 PM

Featuring artwork from:
Rob Sato, Ako Castuera, Aaron Woes, Jeremiah Ketner, Michael Hsiung, Christine Wu, Jeff McMillan, Cristina Paolos, Mari Naomi, Joe To, Gosha Levochkin, Kohei Yamashita, Theo Ellsworth, Hiro Hayashi, Stella Hultberg, Luke Chueh, Deth P. Sun, Sara Saedi, Dionne Bang, Yoskay Yamamoto, Edwin Ushiro, Audrey Kawasaki, Miso, Sean Chao, Martin Hsu, Bubi Au Yeung, Joe Hahn, Heidi Hahn, Mu Pan, Jen Tong, Pam Henderson, Stasia Burrington, Eleanor Davis, Kio Griffith, Silvio Porreta, Susie Ghahremani, Edwin Ushiro, Andrice Arp, Jeni Yang, Diem Chau, Andrew Hem, Shawn Cheng, Nao Harada, Aaron Brown, Ryuji Oguni, Ken Taya, Saelee Oh, Jeremiah La Torre, Wayne Johnson, Mari Inukai, Shihori Nakayama, Elliot Brown, Kerry Horvath, APAK, Sana Park, Jon Lau + More



Serpent: back detail
This piece will be on view at the Year Of The Snake show at GR2.  It's carved from a carpenter's pencil, the carving is mostly done on the pencil's wood.  The snake's black coloring comes from rubbing shaved graphite onto the wood.  I like how shiny and black the snake is.  The only tool I used on this carving was an X-acto knife with a number 11 blade.

C is for Cortez

I'm in love with Cortez!
This is a recently finished commission for Kevin as a gift to his sweetheart Kate.  Cortez is their kitty who likes to hunt earthworms and has a hook tail.  Thank you so much for finding my work guys!  I hope you enjoy little Cortez. :)


360 view of Cortez
This was another experiment at combining different colors.  I really love how the stripes came out.  Adding color like this is tricky, you can't directly melt the wax onto the crayon.  The wax that is on top will just pop off after it's cooled.  To get this coloring done I have to carve a deep channel where I want the new color to be, then pour in the melted wax.  Think if it as inlay work.  So each of Cortez's dark grey stripes are made of deep cuts in the light grey crayon with melted dark grey wax poured into them.  The excess wax is carved off, then the body is shaped.  It's a much longer process, but the effects are well worth it.
His white snout is also made from carving a deep oval shaped hole, then white wax is poured in.  After the white snout is cooled the nose and mouth features are carved into the white wax and the dark grey wax poured in.  I hope that makes sense?  :P



Kate viewing the crayons. Photo courtesy of Kevin Turco.
Thank you guys!  This was such a fun project!

Midnight Bao Quest

OMG SOOOO GOOOD!
I had a HUGE urge to make bao tonight.  I've never done it before and I don't have a steamer, but the show must go on and I MUST eat bao!  I found a great online recipe for bao dough and made an ad-lib pork/cabbage filling.  I'm pretty happy with the taste of the filling.  I'll have to recreate it in the future and write down my filling recipe.  I have a bad habit of winging it w/ cooking, I don't write my measurements down.  I mostly go by taste and whatever I have at home, i.e. if I don't have lemon juice I'll use vinegar...

Here's the dough recipe from www.myrecipes.com:

• 1 cup warm water (100° to 110°)
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 package dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons)
• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 14 2/3 ounces)
• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

For the filling I used:
(Sorry there are no measurements for these... I just starting throwing stuff in a bowl)

• 1 pound of ground pork
• shredded/finely chopped cabbage (same volume ratio of cabbage-to-pork)
• finely chopped garlic and ginger
• salt, black pepper, white pepper, soy sauce
• olive oil (I would have added sesame oil, but I ran out)

I pretty much followed the instructions on the link for the dough and then mixed my filling ingredients while the dough rises.  I made 24 smaller bao's from this recipe.  Because I don't have a large steamer I had to look for an alternative way to cook these.  I found this great video where they fried then steamed the buns in a saucepan.  PERFECT! 


The frying/steaming process basically calls for you to heat up canola oil in a large saucepan then place the uncooked bao's in the pan.  Fry them until the bottom is golden brown then pour in a cup of water and cover with a lid.  Cook/steam them until you hear sizzling, remove the lid and let the excess water cook off.  The finished fried/steamed bao looks like the picture above.  Nice a crispy on the bottom and fluffy on top!  Best of both worlds!  But you need to take care and not burn the bao with frying them for too long.  I burned my first batch!

I made 24 bao's, froze half and cooked half.  I'm fully satisfied and going back to work now. :)
Bao Quest completed!  I might have to do a step by step post about this in the future.  Bao is definitely on the menu now.  It wasn't that hard and being able to freeze them makes it easy to prep for a few days worth of meals.

Limited Edition Prints Available

Limited editions prints are now available. 
I've been sitting on these prints for a few months now.  This was a joint venture between me and the gallery I've been working with in Milan.  They turned out really well, but got damaged during shipping from Italy.  I was heart broken.  I didn't want to sell them because they were damaged, but I also need to recoup the cost of printing and shipping...  I'd like to get something back for our time and effort.  These were originally priced higher, but I'm offering them for much less.  :)  This offer is only through my blog and my FB.  Since I don't have a shopping cart please email me if you'd like to buy a print.  I will update this post when they sell out.

8 Raven prints left & 7 Elephant prints left.
The prints are $40 each and shipping within the US is about $15.
I will ship them in a heavy duty shipping sleeve wedged in cardboard.  It's about 3 pounds, but very bulky.  I think international shipping will cost prohibitive, but feel free to contact me if you'd like a shipping quote outside of the US.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions!


"The Raven & The Sun" print
17" high  x 11.5" wide
Printed on high quality matte paper.  There are slight corner dings on the bottom corners.
Limited run of 25, signed and numbered
$40.00 per print + Shipping (about $15 within the US)
To purchase please contact me:
diem@diemchau.com


Detail of corner ding on Raven print...  I'm pretty sure framing will hide the ding.



"The Last Elephant" print
17" high  x 11.5" wide
Printed on high quality matte paper.  There are slight corner dings on the bottom corners.
Limited run of 25, signed and numbered
$40.00 per print + Shipping (about $15 within the US)
To purchase please contact me:
diem@diemchau.com


Detail of corner ding on Elephant print...  I'm pretty sure framing will hide the ding.

Thank You Veterans!

Today is Veteran's Day in the US.  I'd like to give a big thank you to all the veterans out there as well as the men and women who are serving our country.  I'm very grateful to be an American citizen.  I'm grateful for all the opportunities that I have and I'm grateful to the nation that took my family in and embraced us as one of her own. 


This was a commission I did last year, I feel terrible it took this long to post about it.  This "Sky High" crayon set has to be one of my favorite pieces to date.  It came at the request of Carmen as a "Welcome Home" gift to Manny, a retired Army helicopter pilot.  In her words, "Having him come home meant the world to me as he was medivac-ed out of Afghanistan, alive".  Manny has served for +18 years in the US Army, with the last 8 years in combat.  Thank you for picking me to make such a special gift Carmen!  I wish the two of you many happy years together!


This is my interpretation of Manny's Kiowa helicopter. There was a lot of creative challenges on how to represent such a large object with so many details on such a small surface. I ended up wrapping the helicopter's image around the crayon. You would have to spin the crayon around to see the full image. You can click on the image to see a larger resolution.

Pictures From Milan

Some pictures from the opening in Milan.  I love how everything was installed, they did such a great job.  Thank you Patricia and KAPPAO!


My embroidery work on the wall and the carved crayons and pencils on pedestals.  KAPPAO made the wooden pedestals and the gallery had the glass(?) covers made.  I can't express enough how wonderful it's been working with Patricia and the gallery.  They've done so much!


The people looking.


Another view of the gallery.  My work on the floor and KAPPAO's work on the wall.


Here is a view of all of my pieces in the show. If you'd like to see them individually you can follow this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyhaus/sets/72157631646952269/

Delicacy of Tiny Things Opened Today!

Orca (#102) 2012
Carved carpenter’s pencil
3 7/8"H x 5/8"W x 1/4"D

My show in Milan at Galleria Patricia Armocida just opened today!  Here are a few more pieces that will be in the show.  I wish I could have been there for the opening, but from what I hear it was a packed opening!  This is also the first time I will have prints available for sale at the gallery.  100 prints are available, 50 prints of each "The Last Elephant" and "The Raven and The Sun".  This is a very limited run, but hopefully we'll be able to offer more prints of other artworks in the future.


Full Sail (#100) 2012
Carved carpenter’s pencil
3 9/16"h x 5/8"w x ¼"


My interview with Gaia Segattini on Vendetta Uncinette!  It's in Italian, but Google does a decent job of translating.  Thank you Gaia :)


The gallery printed this uber cool invite!  It's a little booklet that's sewn together.  I believe the text might be an amalgam of my handwriting and KAPPAO's handwriting?  I recognize some of the lettering, but not all of it.  Patricia really put a lot of time and effort into this!  Bravo, this is such a cool card!


Delicacy of Tiny Things invite card interior.
My image on the left and KAPPAO's image on the right.  Both have embossed detail!  This is totally going the extra mile.


Embossed elephant on invite.


Octopus (#108) 2012
3 3/8”h x 5/16”w x 5/16”d
Carved Crayola crayon

Another crayon piece in the Milan show.


Detail of Octopus.


My first try at taking a 360 video of my crayons.  Sorry for the shakiness folks, this is quite crude!  I need to make a rotating stand and get a tripod for my camera.  I'd like to do a video for all of my carved work.  The photos are great, but I feel you can miss a lot detail.