Drumheller’s Sook Park spends her time over the winter crafting paper sculptures made from pieces of folded paper. She gets the paper pieces from using scrap, magazine pages, and used lottery selection cards. Park estimates the large swan on the right takes over a thousand pieces to construct.
Customers at Drumheller’s Valley Truck and Car Wash (Esso) often smile or ask questions in amazement when they see an origami animal sculpture made by owner Sook Park.
Park, who owns the business with husband Chiha, uses her down time at work and home during the winter to make her paper sculptures, and also has helpers who make pieces in their spare time for her.
Traditional paper-folding, also known as origami, dates back hundreds of years in Europe and Asia.
Park explained she first saw the origami figures on television when she was visiting Korea, and was instantly impressed and interested in learning how to make them.
Her son told her she could learn the art on the internet, and she set about watching instructional videos on You Tube.
Three years later, she would have amassed a huge collection of the origami figures if she’d kept them.
“I’ve given a lot away, but I didn’t count how many,” said Park.
Her current collection on the commercial pop fridge at work includes a monkey, a pair of swans, and a dinosaur.
She makes the figures out of scraps of paper, magazine pages, and used lottery selection cards, the cards customer fill out.
For the lottery cards, she makes four cuts. Each piece of paper from that stack then takes nine folds to shape the piece. She estimates it takes about 1,000 pieces to make a large sized figure, such as a swan.
The pieces of paper are interconnected differently to create each figure, and only the odd tricky or special piece added on a figure requires gluing.
“It’s easy. I already have four at home I made this year.” she said.
