Paper cranes honor fallen soldiers
At the beginning of President George W. Bush’s second term in
office, Hunter Levinsohn had some serious apprehensions about the next four years and the ongoing
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As a form of protest and to commemorate those
soldiers who lost their lives in the War on Terror, Levinsohn, of Hillsborough, began clipping the
first two pages from a section of The New York Times that included a column, “The Names of the
Dead.”
Everyday for the next four years, Levinsohn would set aside time in her busy day to
collect the pages of the paper that included news from the war and the names of American soldiers
who were killed in combat.
When time permitted, Levinsohn began carefully folding the
newspaper pages into elegant origami cranes. By the time she was finished, she had hand crafted
1,461 origami birds.
“This started out as my angst of the Bush administration’s second
term,” Levinsohn said. “My plan was on the day that Obama was inaugurated, I would rent a place and
set them all out (on display). It was to be a celebration of something new and to let go of
something old.”
Levinsohn said she chose the crane to convey her message because the animal
is a symbol of “longevity, luck and peace.” The symbolic crane was also used in a special children’s
memorial for the lives lost at Hiroshima, Japan, where the first atomic bomb was dropped on a
civilian population. The names of the soldiers killed were also written onto the wings of the
cranes, Levinsohn said.
Before retiring the cranes permanently — and allowing the nature of
decomposition to take its effect — Levinsohn wanted to display the paper cranes one more time.
After visiting close friend Susi Lieff at her summer home in the Tater Hill community last
year, Levinsohn became awestruck by the area’s natural beauty and knew she had found a new venue to
display her works of art.
For much of Wednesday afternoon, Lieff, Levinsohn and their close
friends set the paper cranes out in the shape of winding and twisting maze for neighbors in the
community to walk through, while quietly reflecting on the lives lost to war.
Levinsohn said
she chose a labyrinth to display the cranes because it is a “symbolic space you enter to become
contemplative and more peaceful.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think about the war, but this
is a tribute to those who gave their lives and limbs, so we have a debt to these people,” Levinsohn
said. “Whether you are liberal, conservative or whatever, these are people who did something they
believed in, and they did it for their country.”
Lieff, a fan and champion of Levinsohn’s
work, welcomed the opportunity to showcase the cranes from the front lawn of her mountain vacation
home.
“Her art isn’t just the ‘beautiful mountains’ or ‘pretty flowers’ or something that
you just look at and feel happy about,” Lieff said. “Her art is provocative. Hunter’s art is a way
for her to express herself and make others think.”
Lieff and Levinsohn hope visitors of the
display took away something meaningful when they walked through the maze of cranes and thought about
the conflicts.
“This is something that is a national issue,” Lieff said. “It doesn’t matter
whether you are pro or against the war. This is just something to mark what happened and to
acknowledge it. We would like people to walk the labyrinth and think of the people who gave their
lives and what that means.”