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Art of peace 50,000 and counting -- message of paper cranes takes flight Diana Walsh, Chronicle Staff Writer		Thursday, September 11, 2003

It was never supposed to go this far. Arlene Elizabeth, an artist living in Oakland, figured she'd fold 1,000 origami cranes -- an international symbol of peace -- and bring them, along with those she had collected from others, to New York as a remembrance of those who died in the World Trade Center. Two years later, she's still folding birds. By her own estimate, she's created 50,000 cranes -- at some point, she says, "you just stop counting." "It's very addictive. I kept trying to think why do I feel compelled to do this? Why not get back to furniture? But I had something to say, and I wanted to share it with other people," said Elizabeth, who designs high-end sculpted furniture. The cranes have become her new medium for creating art and teaching children about peace. Elizabeth, who usually spends a couple of hours a day folding, has turned thousands of the tiny colorful birds into elaborate, giant mosaics, including one depicting the World Trade Center and the New York skyline and another, more vivid portrayal of firefighters removing the lifeless body of the New York Fire Department chaplain from the devastation. Today, Elizabeth will show her canvases at Aurobora Press in San Francisco and is offering an invitation to anyone who would like to fold his or her own peace crane. Elizabeth, who had never folded a crane before Sept. 11, 2001, realizes some may find her obsession odd. She says she turned to origami shortly after the tragedy because she felt she had to do something -- small as it seem to others -- to promote the idea of peace. "(Secretary of State) Colin Powell does what he can do, and cranes are just what I do," she said. Overcome with emotion after terrorists struck the World Trade Center, Elizabeth remembered meeting a Buddhist nun years earlier who was folding "all these little birds" for the people of Hiroshima. After researching the ancient art form on the Internet, she set out to do the same for the victims of the twin towers. "I couldn't think of any better way to use my time than to devise artwork that would help people process their feelings," said Elizabeth. And once she started folding the cranes, she couldn't stop. "I couldn't wait to get home to fold the cranes," said Elizabeth, who lives with her partner and 7-year-old son in a loft in Oakland. Within weeks, she and a friend, Daegan Reimer, launched the World Trade Center Healing Project. They asked the Oakland Museum, which was holding a Day of the Dead exhibition, if they could set up a table where they could teach visitors how to make cranes. There, Elizabeth met more people who were also avid crane folders -- who, in turn, gave her thousands more cranes to bring East. By Thanksgiving, she, her partner and son Ian were carrying 6,000 folded birds to New York. They hung some of the cranes in strands at ground zero and distributed others at Strawberry Fields, the memorial to John Lennon in Central Park. "The crane is really useless to you until you give it to someone else," she said. "The process of folding is important, but it really becomes empowering when you share it with someone." When she returned from New York, she sat down and folded some more and looked for more children to teach. The table she and Reimer set up at the Oakland Museum had attracted the interest of several public school teachers who invited them into classrooms. And the two began contacting more schools, which landed them in dozens more classrooms over the past two years. Elizabeth and her family continued to pass out cranes at peace rallies, and brought thousands more to New York on the first anniversary of the attacks. But with birds multiplying by the day, Elizabeth began exploring other creative uses for the cranes and found they work well as a medium for creating another art form: paper mosaics. Gluing the cranes individually onto canvas backing, she began by crafting several small flags and banners. Eventually, the size and scope of her mosaics grew and now include a 10-foot image of the World Trade Center towers. Her most dramatic and stunning piece depicts two firefighters removing the body of the Rev. Mychal Judge -- the department's chaplain -- from the ruins of the buildings. From a distance, it looks like a pointillist painting. But it is 7,000 neatly folded cranes placed precisely next to each other. The 8-foot-tall canvas has hung at a fire station in San Francisco for the last several months but will be on display along with several other canvases today. "I know it's crazy. It's like people who make artwork from corn or toast, but I also feel like the medium is part of the message here," said Elizabeth. "I think that it's through art and memorializing people through art that it will not be forgotten.".Elizabeth's mosaics will be on display today from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Aurobora Press, 147 Natoma St., San Francisco.

Oakland project promotes origami to help heal pain of Sept. 11 losses
Crane, swan monument on display in Oakland
By Monica Sagullo CORRESPONDENT

OAKLAND-- On the six-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Healing Project of Oakland set up an origami crane monument in front of Oakland City Hall on Monday, inviting passers-by to make a swan or crane in memory of those who died.

The quiet tribute to victims of the tragedy -- and everyone who has lost their lives to violence -- included more than 5,000 paper cranes. They were put together in the shape of an American Flag, the California and New York state flags, and the World Trade Center twin towers.

"The flags represent all the people who died," said Ruth Gonzer, of the Healing Project.

The project's aim is to help people participate, director Arlene Elizabeth said.

Through the collective construction of the peace crane monuments, the Healing Project aims to help channel negative feelings about Sept. 11 into hope and healing.

"I think it's beautiful, and a really nice thing to see," said Sarah Stoddart of Oakland. "I like all the colors and what it represents."

Passers-by and many city employees visited the booth during their lunch break to fold a crane or just to say hello, Gonzer said.

Toward reaching its goal of 6 million cranes, the Healing Project now has about 500,000 cranes from people all over the world. Its Web site on www.wtchealingproject.org has had thousands of visits from more than 35 countries, and thousands of birds have come through the mail, Elizabeth added.

The crane monument, which will have a canopy made of the paper birds strung together and flags representing the nations of people who died, is to be given to the city of New York in hopes of finding it a permanent home, Elizabeth said.

For now, the sculpture can be seen at the Healing Project's warehouse, 1066 47th Ave. No. 13, on an appointment basis. The warehouse also has an art gallery and wood-and-crane folding workshops.

"We are working on having the sculpture travel the country to different locations throughout the summer leading up to Sept. 11," Elizabeth said. A journal about the sculpture's journey across the nation will be available on the Web site.

Folding at a rate of 70 birds an hour, Elizabeth has other plans for the cranes after the main monument project is complete. By use of a "quilting motif," one project is to create a mosaic of origami birds replicating the Imagine Mosaic at Central Park in New York. Healing Project members visited Central Park during Thanksgiving and placed 6,000 birds around the word 'Imagine.' After taking a photo, the members decided to pixelate the picture and use it to create a mosaic of birds in that image.

They plan to give one 12-by-12 foot mosaic to the owner of Virgin Records, Richard Branson, in hopes he will agree to hang one up at each of his stores on Sept. 11. Elizabeth said Branson does not know about the Healing Project's plans yet, but she believes "when we show up with the first one, (which is made up of 7,000 cranes), it will blow his mind."

For more information visit www.wtchealingproject.org.

Oakland Tribune Online
Artist asks public to help decorate twin towers art
October 20, 2001
By Jason Bono CORRESPONDENT

OAKLAND -- Arlene Elizabeth finally broke television's mesmerizing spell two days after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks. Her instinct as a professional artist then took control, so she began creating again inside the converted Oakland warehouse that doubles as her home and workshop.

As a result, two 8-foot-tall towers now stand in the breezeway of the Oakland Museum of California's Oak Street entrance, at 1000 Oak St. The artwork is billed as "The Healing Project," and the public is invited to help decorate the work Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.

Elizabeth initially dug into the "found" materials she uses as creative supplies and chose sheet metal and different-sized pieces of wood. Before long, she created two models of the World Trade Center's twin towers -- shiny on the outside and eerily black inside.

"When you remember someone who's died or something that's been destroyed, you just don't remember them in death and destruction," she said. "You remember them before -- in life. The piece embodies both of those."

But visitors to Elizabeth's work space objected to the blackness of the wooden designs inside her towers, saying the impression was too stark and depressing. So Elizabeth devised a remedy that is gradually transforming her towers through a community effort.

With the help of Girl Scouts from New Jersey, Shriners in Alameda, lawyers in Menlo Park, children at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford and her local "hippie-intellectual friends," she is draping the towers in brilliant strands of origami cranes and swans. Already more than 1,000 paper birds cover the metallic facades.

The birds symbolize peace, transformation, strength in death and hope, Elizabeth said. And their use was partially inspired by the strands of origami cranes draped over monuments in Hiroshima Peace Park in Hiroshima, Japan.Destination NYC

Elizabeth wants to recruit help in covering the towers with at least 7,000 colorful paper birds by Thanksgiving, when she will return to New York to visit family members. She intends to display the "healing monument" in the city -- whether in an art gallery, garden or street corner.

Although Elizabeth conceptualized "The Healing Project" and built most of it, she credits it to a community effort for the ongoing origami help she is receiving and for help other artists lent in building the structure. These Oakland artists contribute to a Web site named theARTproject.net, which represents Artists Responding to Terrorism.Memorial to dead

"This work acts as a memorial to those who have died, to keep the spirit of humanity alive, and to provide a touchstone to both the horror and the healing," Elizabeth said.