The art student who created the image for the Year of the Rat stamp was honored this week at a special dedication ceremony at the school she attends.
Camille Chew, 28, is a graduate student in printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, also known as RISD. The ceremony was held on the school’s Providence campus.
“[A stamp is] a really exciting place to get your artwork displayed because so many people get to see it and it travels all over the world,” Chew told the Providence Journal.
The stamp, part of the Postal Service’s latest Lunar New Year series, features a rat mask that evokes the elaborately decorated masks used in the holiday’s traditional dragon dances.
Chew told the Journal that she created the image through a digital sketch, then made prints of the mask. Next, she cut out the image and painted it before adding details, including the flowers and tassels that dangle below the rat’s ears.
Antonio Alcalá, a USPS art director, designed the stamp using Chew’s image.
“Imagine how far Camille’s artwork will travel,” said Connecticut Valley District Manager Kevin Clark, who spoke at the Feb. 26 special dedication ceremony. “Stamps bind the nation together. They celebrate different cultures and they show the world who or what is important throughout history.”
The event is one of several special dedications held this month for the stamp, which was released Jan. 11.