Historical Artifact
Chop Seals have always been very interesting to me. Although chops are commonly made out of wood or stone, I don’t know how to carve into either of them well enough, but potatoes on the other hand, that I do. I grew up making potato stamps with my mom, printing out our own homemade wrapping paper for Christmas, so when we were given this assignment, I knew what I was going to do immediately.
I decided to carve the Chinese symbol for the word snake into my chop, as my Chinese zodiac sign is the metal snake. Commonly designs carved into chops are transferred onto paper with red ink, I thought I would follow suit. Overall, I found this assignment to be very fun. Not only did I revisit a childhood tradition, but I also got to practice my photography skills. If I were to give myself a grade, I would give myself an 8 out of 10. I thought that the idea of taking an item that is full of history and trying to recreate it with a potato is clever. But I do believe that I could have done a cleaner job, the overall print didn’t come out the way I was expecting, but it’s a potato, of course it will add some flavor to my artwork.