I chose to link to Elvio’s potato printing because we seemed to take a very different approach to the task, but still ended up with a similar product. I was also interested to see that we both took photographs of our supplies and stamps along with the finished prints! Elvio chose to write the word ‘Crazy’ in mostly lowercase letters with nice curves, like a typewriter, whereas I took the easier route and wrote ‘PLANT’ in all caps to maximize the number of straight lines I could cut. I did all my planning in my head ahead of time over the course of a couple days (sometimes I do my best thinking while I am trying to fall asleep), and then in about 20 minutes one day while I was waiting for supper to cook, I spontaneously started carving the potatoes. It seems that Elvio was much more careful and tried to draw out the pattern on his potatoes before beginning to carve them.
A comparison of the two prints:
In the end, I think that Elvio came up with a more uniform set of prints and his lettering looks more like a hand-written sign. He wrote, “I agree with the argument that Gutenberg’s invention was successful because he replaced and mimicked the look of existing text.” I think that Elvio has done the same. If I were creating letters for print that were in less ephemeral medium, I think I would have taken into account the aesthetics and readability of the lettering.
Elvio’s Crazy Print
Thank you Elvio for the idea of using this task in a classroom setting. In my plant physiology lab, I have an entire activity that centres around osmosis in potato tissues… perhaps I can work on integrating printing into the lab so we can use the remaining potato tissue for something!