I know, I understand. You see a headline about "paper birds" and worry that you've fallen through some wormhole to the other side of the design galaxy, over by the calligraphy Vimeos and motivational wall-hangings and all the other precious stuff that swirls around Etsy Major. Worry not. These paper birds are tremendous.
They're the work of Diana Beltran Herrera, a Colombian artist. Initially trained as an industrial designer, Herrera has been making these delicate paper beasts for the last several years. Her earliest birds were more abstract; they looked like line drawings made with paint markers. But with each successive series you can see her craft developing---the details filling in, the feather counts multiplying. Herrera's most recent birds look like they just flew out of the zoo.
One of her recent installations debuted at Pictoplasma, an arts event in Berlin, earlier this year. It featured two large exotic birds suspended in flight, both resplendent with Hawaiian Punch plumage. In June, she displayed six more new sculptures at Longwood Gardens, in Pennsylvania. The series included Bluebird, a Robin, and an especially stunning Eastern Meadowlark. Each is compact and astonishingly lifelike.
Herrera begins by gathering up photographs and drawing her subject in Adobe Illustrator. She prints those recreations out in full size to serve as her models. Creating the birds is basically a matter of meticulous cutting and pasting; Herrera prefers a particular brand of 120-gram paper from France (normal printer paper is usually around 80 grams). For the legs, she uses wire and floral tape. The beak and the eyes always come last. The process can take anywhere from five days to two weeks, depending on the bird's complexity.
Currently, Herrera's keeping busy with a handful of commissions from the fashion world. She's also putting together a sizable show in Indonesia, supported by the Colombian Embassy there. Somehow, in between it all, she's finding time to finish her M.A. in Fine Art from University West of England, in Bristol. She lives there with Thomas Poulsom, an artist who, no joke, makes birds out of LEGO.
