Whenever you feel reluctant to call what we do with paper, even at the most basic level, "art," reread the wonderful quote by Leo Tolstoy from his essay of 1896 "What Is Art?" that was reprinted in British Origami #186: 'This winter,' he writes, 'a lady of my acquaintance taught me how to make cockerels by folding and inverting paper in a certain way, so that when you pull them by their tails, they flap their wings. This invention comes from Japan. Since then I have been in the habit of making these cockerels for children. This would unfailingly amuse not only children, but all the grown-ups, who happened to be around. The servants, as well as the ladies and gentleman, would brighten up and draw together under the influence of these paper cockerels. Everyone smiled and looked happy, exclaiming, 'They're just like real birds - look how they flap their wings!'The person who invented these cockerels must have been enchanted by his own discovery, and the joy is transferred to others. And that is why the making of a paper cockerel, strange as it may seem, is real art.I cannot refrain from observing that this was the only new work in the sphere of paper cockerels that I have encountered during the last sixty years. At the same time, the poems, novels and musical opuses that I have read and heard during the same period run to hundreds, if not thousands. This is because cockerels do not matter, you might say, whereas poems and symphonies do. But I think that the reason lies in the fact it is much easier to write a poem, paint a picture, or compose a symphony than to invent a new cockerel.And, strange to say, the production of a cockerel like this is not only art, but good art. At the same time I maintain, that the state in which people sit on their little settees in front of the Sistine Madonna, straining to recollect other people's recollections about the picture, has nothing whatsoever to do with the aesthetic feeling.' http://www.britishorigami.info/practical/highlite/180-189.php#186 -Joel
