Paper Craft

Diana Beltran Herrera Constructs Lifelike Birds Out of (Only) Paper

Diana Beltran Herrera

No, those birds in flight aren’t a photograph—they’re paper sculp­tures by Diana Bel­tran Her­rera. For years, the Colom­bian artist has craft­ed life­like, grace­ful crea­tures using metic­u­lous con­struc­tion and fine tex­tures. It’s these intri­cate details that make Diana’s sculp­tures so impres­sive; look close­ly, and you’ll notice all of the small cuts that per­fect­ly mim­ic a bird’s plumage.

Diana’s for­mal edu­ca­tion is in indus­tri­al design, but after grad­u­at­ing, she real­ized she did­n’t want to pur­sue it as a career. “I am real­ly inter­est­ed in the sim­ple process­es of trans­for­ma­tion that don’t need com­pli­cat­ed tools or indus­tri­al process­es,” she told Frankie Mag­a­zine. Hence the paper.

In Diana’s eyes, there’s a dis­con­nect between humans and nature; through her art­work, she wants to repair this rela­tion­ship. As a result, pieces are “pre­sent­ed as a resis­tance where those sculp­tures remain in an ide­al state and act like a mod­el of rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a real­i­ty that does­n’t suf­fer any change.” They’re beau­ti­ful now and will remain so for a lifetime—that way, we can always admire them. (via My Mod­ern Met)

Diana Beltran Herrera

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Diana has recent­ly branched out and cre­at­ed butterflies:

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