Yuri Shumakov

Yuri and Katrin Shumakov - a stellar artist-duo, professional origami creators, who started their origami journey in France in 1989 and since then they unfold this art in a heretofore unseen way! They have created amazing paper world ORILAND with incredible fantasy Kingdoms that impress with rich detail of majestic castles, abundance of paper flora and busy life of little paper dwellers. Their newest kingdoms Toy-ronto and Albuquerque combine fantasy and reality together, presenting a whimsical artistic rendition of iconic sights of these cities. Another beautiful and elegant aspect of origami they brought to life is ORIBANA - a marriage of two Japanese arts: Origami and Ikebana. By combining these remarkable art-forms, in early 1990s Katrin and Yuri began to create paper flower arrangements in paper vases and thought up a distinctive name for it - Oribana. Since then they designed more than 50 charming oribana-compositions with a broad variety of origami flowers and vases. Being prolific origami authors they created more than a thousand of origami designs from simple forms and cute characters to complex dinosaurs' skeletons and architecture that all have a distinctive Oriland style.

Visit their site http://www.oriland.com to see what origami can be!

Psychologists by education, Katrin and Yuri have studied how origami helps children learn. Their Ph.D scientific work shows that by doing origami, children develop better use of both hands and that origami can improve creativity and intelligence in children ages 7 to 11. They believe that origami is "entertainment for the soul, gymnastics for the mind, and training for the hands." In 1999, Yuri and Katrin received the Silver Award in the ThinkQuest International Competition for their 'Travel to Oriland' website and it brought them and their team to Universal Studios Hollywood for the Award Ceremony! Their Oriland.com website became a winner of the Childnet Award that was given them in Paris, France. Both these projects were acknowledged as high quality creative, educational and fun websites for children and adults. Yuri and Katrin have written more than 30 origami books and instructional CDs, and their works have been exhibited in many countries including several venues in the United States, France, Spain and Canada. The Shumakovs also extend their artistic talents to the realm of photography and music. Katrin is a winner of the Toronto Photo Contest 2010. Yuri is enjoying music composing and sound design. They live in Toronto, Canada, love yoga and a healthy style of life.