At first glance- it's a bust made of plaster, or maybe clay. But look again... these sculptures from an artist in China are actually made out of thousands of pieces of fine paper.<br/> <br />Li Hongbo says he's always loved working with paper- a material first invented in China.<br/> <br />The flexible nature of paper, Li says, allows him to transform one shape into another, literally and metaphorically.<br/> <br />(SOUNDBITE)(Mandarin) ARTIST LI HONGBO SAYING:<br/> <br />"At the beginning, I discovered the flexible nature of paper through Chinese paper toys and paper lanterns. Later, I used this to make a gun. A gun is solid, used for killing, but I turned it into a tool for play or for decoration. In this way, it lost both the form of a gun, and the culture inherent to a gun. It became a game."<br/> <br />Using a stencil, Li glues page upon page of fine paper into massive blocks which he then stacks on top of each other.<br/> <br />He uses saws and sanders to chisel the paper into replicas of busts he used to dra
