| Chavez
lends life to paper
in origami art
Lana Sweeten-Shults Times Record News
Y.K. Chavez doesn't fold under pressure.
She folds with it, all to make the origami creations that only
she knows the secrets of and that she'll display Saturday at the
Wichita Falls Museum and Arts Center. Take the chirpy scene she
calls "Chester and Pinky Explore the World" - a poster board-sized
communion of animals seemingly moving to their own beat, though
a beat pounded out by the same drummer. On a sapphire-cool blue
ocean sit three giant lobsters in one corner, underneath the shade
of a sprawling tree topped by crows. |
|
|
Move to the middle of this blanket of blue, you'll find schools
of fish, some zebra-striped, others with helmet heads, others
mere specks of black. They scoot along, happily around the path
of a couple of sailboats with checkered sails. Move to another
corner, you'll catch a glimpse of cotton candy-colored flamingoes
and towering flowers. Chester and Pinky overlook it all from their
own little corner of this children's storybook world. "Chester
is my chicken," said Chavez, a native of Taiwan who dabbles in
origami -the Japanese art of folding colorful sheets of paper
into objects. Pinky would be the portly pigs in Chavez's origami
world. Chester, Pinky and the rest of this barnyard-meets-zoo-meets-ocean
clan all spring up from Chavez's imagination, and her childhood.
"When I was 5 years old, I grew up with them (chickens)," said
Chavez, who also found childhood distractions at a nearby pond,
where she would "make a little (paper) boat and watch it float
away."
|
| Her
mother taught her the art of origami and she's loved paper folding
ever since. "I try to appreciate my mom," she said of her work.
"…I thank her for teaching me." It's an art she shares with others
during demonstrations at Hobby Lobby and coming up June 2 at the
Butteryfly Festival in River Bend Nature Works. But Chavez guards
her origami secrets, hoping one day to pass them on to someone
who loves the art as much as she does. Chavez doesn't rely on
instruction books for her creations, instead coming up with her
own intricate patterns, some like Pinky the Pig so intricate they
take 20 minutes (and a lifetime of practice) to fold.
|
| |
"It's my own style," Chavez said of her work and scans origami
books often to see if other artists use the same folding techniques,
but she hasn't seen her techniques reproduced yet. "… I read
all the books and they don't." Chavez, 49, who moved to Wichita
Falls after marrying an American serviceman, invented her
own patterns for the frogs and turtles in her origami displays.
And about a month ago, she figured out how to make a crow.
"They back yard has a crow tree," she said. "I thought, 'If
I could make a crow, I'd be very happy'. I don't think I can
do it because crows have a long tail." But look close at a
Chavez display, and you'll see long-tailed crows seemingly
fluttering from treetops. |
Chavez has created more than 1,000
pieces for the exhibit Saturday at the museum and will be selling
some of her work to raise scholarship funds for Midwestern State
University art students. Chavez said she often amazes herself
with her knack for paper-folding. "Even myself, I don't understand."
Someone once told her that she was able to "change a paper to
a life with a soul," Chavez said. "I just want to show how
this universe works."
Lana Sweeten-Shults is Art and entertainment editor of the Times
Record News.
Article was featured "Next" published May 11, 2001.
Y.K. Origami
and all artwork © copyright 2001 YK Chavez.
|
|
