A rainbow of 1,000 cranes is perched inside the College of Social Work.
The permanent installation of 1,000 paper cranes hanging from beaded thread was the work of Irene Ota, the diversity coordinator of the College of Social Work.
For 15 months, students, faculty and visitors have helped to fold the cranes. Each is signed with a name, the year and the words ‘peace,’ ‘health’ or ‘happiness,’ depending on what each person wanted their crane to represent.
Ota said she felt the communal effort and the meaning of the 1,000 cranes is an affirmation of “what we’re supposed to do as social workers and as human beings.”
Ethan Sellers, a senior in social work, said he hadn’t noticed the cranes before, as he usually spends his time in the computer lab between classes, but he enjoys the installation.
Ota said she has long been folding paper cranes and giving them to her family and friends when they got married. They are a traditional Japanese gift representing a wish of happiness and prosperity for the couple. The cranes are also associated with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima after the popularization of the story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl exposed to radiation poisoning from the bombing of Hiroshima who decided to make 1,000 paper cranes to wish for her health.
Ota said she had the idea for the installation after people said how much they liked the 1,000 cranes from her oldest daughter’s marriage she had in her office. She then went to the student lounge and other student gatherings for over a year and encouraged people to fold and sign the cranes.
“It seemed like a lot of people wanted to learn how to make them,” Ota said. “There was a sense and investment of being in a community that would result in something tangible.”
Sellers said he liked the variety of cranes in the exhibit.
“It’s cool that they all look different,” he said. “In a way you could argue that it’s like how social work brings a lot of people with different backgrounds together to the same cause.”
While folding and signing the cranes was a community effort, Ota assembled all of them together onto beaded wire herself due to the specific needles and threads that were required to keep the integrity of the cranes intact. She also wanted to arrange the cranes in a specific order.
Ota said she hopes people who walk by the piece inquire about its origins and its meaning as well as enjoy its beauty.
The actual installation is finished, but Ota said the college is working to acquire lighting for it. The college is also looking to put up Plexiglass to protect the piece and prevent people from stealing the cranes.
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