Been to two back-to-back origami conventions. Catching up with my blog now, picking up the story where we left off…
The 2023 Pacific Coast Origami Convention (PCOC) was at a big fancy hotel right near Union Square. This conference was supposed to happen in the fall of 2021 but got delayed due to a resurgence of COVID, so we were all really looking forward to it after all this time.
We arrived Thursday evening and ran into a bunch of origami friends in the lobby, including Maria from Bogota, Colombia. Jeannie and took the cable car down to Fisherman’s Wharf and had dinner Pier 39, right on the bay near the Golden Gate bridge and Alcatraz where the sea lions hang out. Total tourist stuff, lots of fun. We got back to the hotel for the first of several late-night folding sessions. I practiced my Halloween Spider, which I was teaching the next day, and made a small but important improvement to the folding sequence.
First thing Friday was the exhibit setup. I brought a shoebox full of models in my backpack, which I’d been carrying around the whole trip. Luckily everything survived being bumped around for a week and was in good shape. It was a good assortment of animals, spaceships, and single-sheet polyhedra, including most of my newly folded stuff and things I was teaching. I had a nice, new large elephant folded out of a golden-yellow paper, because I’ve been folding elephants lately to donate to OUSA’s annual holiday tree.
My Halloween Spider class was full and it was among the more complex models I’ve ever attempted to teach, despite my aim to design a relatively simple and easy spider. The class went over really well, and everyone finished. I had a document camera to show a close-up view of my work in progress on a projector, and that helped alot. One kid folded tiny one out to 3″ paper. Very impressive.
We found a Japanese restaurant near the hotel that served udon and sushi. Several other groups from the convention were there, and I was able to borrow some paper to fold with, and made an Octopus and Cuttlefish for model menu.
That afternoon I took Jared’s class, a Sea Lion. We kinda ran out of time toward the end and didn’t really get to do a proper job of the sculpting and shaping. Too bad, because his version of the model looked pretty nice. During the class I was able to fold my own California Sea Lion, a new model which I’d only folded once before, two years ago, so I could submit diagrams of it to the convention collection of 2021. I found out later there was a table or California themed models in the exhibit space, so I put it there.
That evening there was a reception with drinks and food, very yummy, followed by some activities. I won a copy of Tomoko Fuse’s book Origami Art, and later on she signed it for me. Tomoko Fuse is one of the world’s great origami artists from Japan, so it was great to meet her. The book signing was in the shopping area, and Paper Tree was the vendor, so I bought lots of cool papers. From there we all went into the hospitality area for more folding, which ran well into the night. At one point I went out with some friends on a beer run. When I returned, Jeannie had brought down the last remaining beers that Dazza had gifted us to share with our table.
Saturday morning I decided that the golden elephant in my exhibit didn’t really go well color-wise with the others I’d folded for the museum, and anyway it was nice enough that I kind of wanted to keep it. So I began folding a new elephant in my hotel room. It was the nicest one yet, made of a 50cm square of whitish marble wyndstone, a.k.a. elephant hide that I’d brought with me. I folded as far as I could before making it 3-d, then stuck it in the book to finish when I got home.
That morning my first class was Peter Engel, who was explaining a system of bird designs he came up with for a commission for a sculpture in a corporate lobby. After that was Tomoko teaching a spiral shell made out of four sheets of paper. I also took a class to fold the Columbus Cube, a cube variation with a sunken corner. It was a modular but an interesting shape, and during the class I worked out how I could fold it from a single sheet.
At lunchtime Jeannie and I walked to Japantown to visit our friend Linda’s store Paper Tree, one the finest origami shops in America. I was happy to see they had my Animal Sculptures book for sale there and prominently displayed. Also lots of paper, other books, and display cases of folded origami, many by Robert Lang. He’d just done a gallery opening there the night before the convention. I bought a cool little metal model of a Japanese temple that you can assemble. We went to a place called Bullet Train Sushi for lunch. The food was really good, and it was delivered by little trolleys in the shape of the Japanese bullet train that ran the length of the counter.
That afternoon I taught Octopus and Cuttlefish. This class was full and went over really well too, and gave me a chance to plug my book. After that I hung around the exhibit for a while, and the hospitality area, talking to other artists. Saturday night was the banquet, followed by more activities including Chocogami, run by my friend Maria, where you fold a model of a thing depicted in the wrapper of a chocolate bar from Colombia. This time I got a shark, and it came out pretty well. It seemed like alot of people asked my to sign their copy of my book at this convention. Maybe I’m a hit out on the west coast, or maybe I just don’t get out there very often. In any event, my book is now on its second printing, which is quite gratifying.
Sunday I slept in and then hung around the exhibit and hospitality. At lunchtime Jeannie and I took a walk to Salesforce Park, the High Anxiety hotel, and the Embarcadero, all together in the same neighborhood. It was a beautiful day and great to see some of San Francisco and the bay.
After lunch I did my polyhedron talk. Again it was very well attended, and Tomoko Peter Engle both attended. At the end there was time for questions, and I got into a great discussion with Peter about single sheet polyhedra and the whole philosophy behind it. This discussion carried out into the hallway after the class was over. I’d never met Peter before; he never comes to New York. It turns out he’s a big fan of my work, particularly my animals. This was a great compliment to me, because I consider Peter one of the original masters, and his book Angelfish to Zen was a big influence on me early on, in particular the way it connects origami to art, design and philosophy.
Later in the afternoon I took Goran’s class. He’s doing really interesting stuff with pleating and curved folding. I also won a book at the silent auction. It’s an older book in Italian, about folding boats. I went thru a phase of designing boats after I’d done airplanes and spaceships, and one of the models on the cover reminded me of one of my own designs.
By Sunday evening I was pretty tired. Lots of our friends were going out to dinner but Jeannie and had dinner at the hotel, because after that we had to catch a cab to the airport. Before I left I gave my golden elephant to Maria for her collection for the Bogota origami group. The flight home was a redeye, and I was able to get some sleep. We landed in NYC as the sun was coming up, and when I got home I went straight to work. By Tuesday I’d caught up on my rest and was back to normal. Only a few short days until the next event. More on that next post.