An artist’s medium is as varied as imagination allows and you’ll find hundreds, maybe even thousands of them here on Colossal. But occasionally a medium itself is altered to create an artwork, as is the case with Seattle artist Diem Chau who works within the narrow confines of graphite pencil leads and colored crayons to carve her delicate sculptures of animals and people. A native of Vietnam, Chau and her family came to America as refugees in 1986 and would later receive a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts after which she began exhibiting her works in New York, Miami, Seattle and Los Angeles.

We’ll get a glimpse of Chau’s miniature carvings here in Chicago at Packer Schopf Gallery opening this Friday. Almost everything you see here will be on view and the artist will be giving a talk at 1pm the following day on April 6th, 2013. See more of her new A-Z series on Flickr and on her blog.