Author: zingblog

Last night I went to see the play Animals Out of Paper, to which I contributed a few origami models, and many more of my designs were folded by others for use in the production. The play was really excellent on a number of levels. Animals Out of Paper was written by Rajiv Joseph and this production was directed by Merri Milwe and starred David Beck, Nairoby Otero, and Maneesh Sasikumar. Talo Kawasaki was the origami consultant.

This production was in a funky church on the Upper West Side. Off-Broadway theatre is a bit like bar bands for actors. You have some incredibly talented people working on a very low budget, doing great work without the accompanying fame. In this case the play had only three characters, which means that the writing and the acting have to be very good cuz there’s very little else. The story centers on the relationship between an origami master, her protégé, and her protégé’s math teacher who also happens to be her suitor. The actors really brought there characters to life with energy and charisma. By the end, you really care about them and their situation, which is more than you can for the typical modern movie.

Along the way there’s drama and humor, and a good amount of subtext and symbolism without getting cheesy, and a good deal of exploration of the creative process, particularly with respect to the question of loss and loneliness. Origami is the vehicle for all this, so there’s also a good deal of origami culture, actual technical knowledge, and even some in-jokes. The playwright is not (as far as I know) an origami guy but obviously cares a lot and spent some time at origami conventions and talking to folders, and he really got that stuff right. I have a friend who works at NASA and I was thinking this is how Steve must feel when he watches Star Trek. I mean, it sounds like the actors understand how a spaceship actually works.

Animals Out of Paper is an excellent play, very well written, and this production was brought to life with excellent actors, direction and origami. Unfortunately last night was the end to the run, so you’ll have to wait for another revival to see it.

The good folks over at Origami Blog have done a review of book Origami Animal Sculpture. They seem to like it a lot. Party on Garth!

http://origamiblog.com/book-review-origami-animal-sculpture/2015/02/04

Well it’s that time of the year again. Time to make some updates to my web site before spring comes. I started off my updating my origami page with the new models I created in 2014. There’s five, including the Dual Cube with Color Change, so that’s a pretty good year.

My friend Brian has recently opened the North American franchise of Origami Shop at www.origamishop.us. For those of you who don’t know, Origami Shop was started by Nicolas Terry in France and is probably the premiere place to get high-end papers for origami for complex models. They have a great variety of papers in large sizes, many of which you can’t get elsewhere, and they have reviews of the different papers detailing things like thickness, texture, and what kind of folding they are appropriate for. Of course you never really know until you have that paper in your hand and start folding. So once a year or so I’ve been placing an order to restock my favorites as well as sample a variety of new papers. The only downside is the expense and slowness of having paper shipped from Europe.

Until now, that is! Brian now can ship to addresses in the USA and it arrives within days. Woo-hoo. I noticed on the website that some of the papers have an accompanying photo of a model, but many don’t. So I offered to Brian that I’d fold a bunch of models for his site, in exchange for the exposure, if he’s send me some paper. Brian graciously agreed and sent me quite a lot of different kinds, including a few I’d never heard of, and some suggestions for things to fold out of the different papers.

As luck would have it, the package arrived on Boxing Day, just as I was loading of the family for a trip upstate to visit my parents. It’s pretty relaxed up at their house so I had some time to dig in and start exploring. I folded one of my Brown Bears out of a paper called Bear Hide. (I think I may have seen it before but under another name. Brian and Terry seem to be rebranding different kinds of paper out there as “Rhino Hide”, “Lizard Hide”, etc., after Elephant Hide, which is the name in the origami community for Marble Wyndstone, the gold standard for heavy paper for complex models. For a while Origami Shop was the only place you could get Elephant Hide, at least in the States.)

Bear Hide is a great paper. I don’t think I’ve ever folded a nicer Bear in fact. And believe me I tried quite a few when I was doing the photos for my book, but they were all either the too thick, or to thin or the wrong color or whatever. I liked it so much I folded another, and then a Moose, and another Moose.

Then I tried a paper called Grainy. Brian had suggested I fold one of my Roses out of it. I almost felt bad taking a big sheet and dividing it down into smaller squares, but I made 5 squares out of it, the largest of which is 2/3 the original size, so it’s still pretty big. This paper is a bit thicker than I normally use for the rose, but it came out quite nice. I had to wet fold the tabs that tuck underneath to finish the model, but that’s it. For the big remaining square I think I’m going to use it to fold a Dragon.

I hope to fold a bunch more models in the days ahead and send them to Brian when I have a boxful. So look for them to appear on origamishop.us later this winter.