Thay Yang

Award-winning illustrator Thay Yang has been called a master folder. At age eighteen he won a senior aesthetics award in the Great International Paper Airplane Contest, sponsored by the Seattle Museum of Flight. I've always been inspired by anything that flies, Yang says. When I was a child, I launched a flight feather from a wild bird. I threw it from a hilltop, and it glided down to the ravine below. I was so fascinated by it that I began experimenting.... The rest is origami history.

Award-winning illustrator Thay Yang has been called a master folder. At age eighteen he won a senior aesthetics award in the Great International Paper Airplane Contest, sponsored by the Seattle Museum of Flight. I've always been inspired by anything that flies, Yang says. When I was a child, I launched a flight feather from a wild bird. I threw it from a hilltop, and it glided down to the ravine below. I was so fascinated by it that I began experimenting.... The rest is origami history. See less