Magical Creations from Y.K.
Y.K. Chavez's fingers are almost always a flurry of folding paper.
She first cuts a square of paper, then looks at it to find the animal, flower or boat within.
Local woman sculpts life through origami
Trish Choate/ Times Record News / Photos by Becky Chaney
She's got magic in her fingertips, and she bestows it upon the world with a sweep of her fingers and a pinch of green paper. Presto -a tiny frog springs up in the palm of Y.K. Chavez's hand. It's a perfect origami sculpture, and perhaps it will join others in a tableau brimming with life. Leaping tigers, flitting birds, swirling goldfish, crouching rabbits and pigs poised to squeal Chavez created over three months.
Peering at it was like falling under a spell cast by the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Each glance coaxed another look from an observer, and every moment of scrutiny revealed 20 details unnoticed before: the fierceness of a cat's tiny face, the grace of a birds's curving neck or the playful kink in a pig's pink tail.
"I think it's beautiful. That's why I like to share it with other people," Chavez said, a smile lighting up her youthful face. You see, she is different from the rest of us. The 49-year-old Wichita Falls woman kept the magic that filled her as a little girl, born of parents who'd emigrated from Shanghai to Taiwan. Marriage to an American serviceman brought her to the prairies of Wichita Falls.
She kept in touch with enchantment throughout her life, a life no less trying than anyone's. At birth, everyone crashes the world's party with a fair share of magic, along with a healthy imagination and a willingness to wallow happily in wonder. As children, we drank magic, imagination and wonder in, as easily and gleefully as we gobbled a cup of hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows.
As we grew older, they began to fall away from us in bits, like glitter dropping from construction paper. Paying the bills, fixing the flat tire and skittering along in the rat race wore away the glue that once held fast the qualities allowing play and perhaps, creativity. But not for Chavez. She still has the ability to be fascinated by the mystery of a simple object, and to see it as something else entirely.
"I guess everybody has different interests. I love paper," she said, kneeling on the immaculate white carpet in her home. "When it's raining and everybody says, 'Oh no, my hair is going to get wet,' I just take newspaper and fold a hat." The hair in question was a long, silky swatch with wisps framing her round face. The mark of her heritage impart a certain charm to her features. Delicate eyebrows swooped over dark eyes. They blazed enthusiasm as she pointed to a pink mamma pig quietly nursing four piglets or a tiger lazing on a park bench. "When you look at it, you can feel the beauty, peace, and happiness," Chavez said.
Occassionally, Chavez packs her origami paper and her charming scenes up for a trip to Hobby Lobby. Children and parents crowd around while she folds impromptu creations. Her audience is invariably delighted. "When will you be here again?" the children say.
Chavez tries to fold creatures as quickly as possible for them, so the frog, which takes a matter of moments, is her usual choice. Others take longer: Swan -1 minute, Goldfish -1 minute 30 seconds, Sailboat -5 minutes, and a Pig -20 minutes.
When she was a girl in Taiwan, chickens, pigs, ducks and other animals that her family and their neighbors raised surrounded the happy child. Chavez's job was to clean out the chick's cage. She pulled out paper, put in new and then pecked the chicks on their fuzzy heads before putting them back. Her mother wasn't pleased, but the daughter couldn't resist the babies' charms. Eventually, Chavez's mother showed her how to make sailboats, goldfish and flowers out of paper, a Chinese woman teaching her daughter a traditionally Japanese art. Some of the patterns Chavez learned at her mother's knee were ancient.
She's taken the art of origami and made it into something that appears to be uniquely her own. For instance, every day she motored by Loop 11 and admired flowers blooming in the area. "So I use my imagination and create a flower like that," Chavez said. Her imagination allows her little rest, but she likes it that way. Sitting in front of the television, Chavez's fingers stay busy with the paper creations. "That's why I make them so small. Because the material is so expensive, and I cannot stop folding them," she said.
The art form seems to have transformed into meditation for her. "It's a very fun thing to do, very peaceful and quiet, never get lonely, never get bored." Chavez said. Her lips folded into a smile and her cheeks creased in a worldwide symbol of happiness, understood in any language.
