b'recognizable as words, but largely illegible without a mirror or intense concen-tration. In some cases, Makuuchi uses his own poetry, as in Sitting at the Bottom of a Bird Coop . . . (fig. 34). Two portrait heads of the artist and his sister, Harriet, are silhouetted against a background of a windowpane grid overlaid with a linear diamond pattern, which is reminiscent of Makuuchis MFA paintings and the wire fencing of the relocation camps and assembly centers. A line of star-shaped marks, which recall barbed wire, run along the bottom of the composition. Two birds, one of which sits atop the artists head, serve as avatars for the two human subjects. Vertical writing on the right side of the composition reads: Sitting at the bottom of a bird coop teaches you to fly high fast and free. The concept of flight was clearly a resonant one for Makuuchi, as he also began to experiment with creating what he called aerogami: cut- and folded-paper animals, figures, and machines that were intended to fly. Although he had taken a sculpture course as part of his MA program at Iowa, he had not made three-dimensional work since that time. Unlike traditional origami, which uses square sheets of paper with no modifications by cutting, Makuuchis aerogami used both scissors and different sizes and weights of paper. He linked the development of this new art form to his memory of making paper airplanes to fly over the fences at Minidoka and to the flora and fauna he saw while in Nigeria. 83Some of the earliest dated examples include fragments of poetry and are haphazardly constructed from white or previously printed paper. Over the next ten years, he continued to refine his techniques, making more elaborate and multicolored animals and figures. Although this part of his work grew to be something of an in-demand novelty, it is clear that at the outset his intentions were serious. FIGURE \x0b Untitled aerogami, 1990. Folded and cut paper, dollar bill, and blue ink, size and FIGURE \x0b Sitting at the Bottom of a Bird Coop . . . CHECKLIST #38 whereabouts unknown. Image courtesy Jamie and Constance Makuuchi. 58 59'