In her recent woodwork ‘Elephant Walk’, Cindy Chinn delicately carves an elephant on top of a single pencil. This feat is not only incredibly difficult, but amazingly intricate with the amount of detail that is put into the animal. Created for the Epiphany Elephant Museum, the small sculpture features three elephants as they are walking along their habitat. All three of the animals are created from the pencil lead while the outer-edges of the pencil add to the landscape for the sculpture.
Cindy Chinn utilizes a magnifying lamp and microscope in order to carve the intricate details on her little sculptures. Each elephant was carved out of three separate carpenter pencils. Once each of the elephants were complete, she placed them on a new carpenter pencil that features the landscape for the elephants. Cindy Chinn loves working with woodcarvings because she is able to find secrets hidden in each different piece of wood. It allows for her to challenge her creativity and find what she wants to reveal to the viewer in her different sculptures.
This isn’t the first time that Cindy Chinn created a sculpture mounted on a pencil. The Nebraska-based artist first received attention back in 2015 when she created an entire train with tunnels included. The different train cars and tracks were crafted from the lead of the pencil. The wood on the outside of the pencil played into the development of tunnels for the train. To fully appreciate both of Chinn’s sculptures, a magnifne glass is needed to see all the intricate details.
To view more of her work, go to http://www.cindychinn.com
