Origami is still a darling pastime but I recall a time when I was much younger where folding lucky paper cranes were an absolute craze, if not addiction. I had friends who would work on folding tens to hundreds of those tiny little birds just to fill a jar or jars then wonder who to give them to if not where else on the shelf could they fit another jar of birds.
Honestly it’s a beautiful art and a fun pastime but at the end of the day what are you really to do with so many mini paper birds? What do you do with the jars of them that your nice friends just keep giving to you?
Well personally I always thought not much – you could instill the aid of non-toxic lacquer to harden them into materials to make unique jewelry such as earrings and bracelets…but aside from that what could you do with them? You can’t possibly have that many cards to personalize and there are only so many birds you want to use in your scrapbook…
Yuliya Kyrpo has the answer to that. I suppose she must have been inspired by the touching story of the late eleven year old Sadako Sasaki. Sadoko was a Japanese girl who developed leukemia years after the dropping of the atomic bomb near her home ( she was 2 when the bomb dropped). In her quest to regain health, she had set on a mission to fold 1000 paper cranes in hope to be granted her wish of being healed of leukemia. It’s a really sad story because she never made it the 1000th bird, she only 644 before the disease finally took her. Her friends helped her complete her quest by finishing the remaining birds and burying all 1000 of them with Sadako in her grave.
Yuliya Kyrpo too folded 1000 paper cranes…but for a very different reason, to bring new life into old used Metro newspapers. She painstakingly folded 1000 birds out of the pages of the Metro and put them all together to make this magnificent dress complete with a ribbon tail!
It’s an amazing sight and was proudly displayed at the London Museum of Art as part of the Trash Fashion show collection!
