Category: Origami

Last weekend was the 2107 Origami USA convention in New York City. It’s a bit more low-key now that it’s out in Queens, but still a great time, and St. John’s campus is a great venue.

I had been thinking that I didn’t have much new to put into my exhibit, but I ended up with a good amount of great stuff. For the last month or so I had been meaning to get around to developing some new model ideas but I’ve been busy with work and graduations and stuff. Nevertheless, I recently finished the draft of my Airplanes and Spaceships book, and had five new models from that plus a few others that I’d never really folded a nice version before. So I made a collection out of 8” squares of so-called shiny paper. I folded another batch out of 6” shiny lotka paper for the model menu. Both very nice and very effective.

Both my classes went over really well. One class was the new Airplanes and Spaceships. I had diagrams and the class folded the models well, and along the way proofread them and found a few corrections.

The other class was my War Elephant a.k.a. Oliphaunt. This is an older model but I always thought it was cool. I only ever folded one satisfactorily and alot of the details were improvised. At the time it pushed the limit of my abilities. So the goal was to get it to the point where I could reliably reproduce it, teach it and eventually diagram it. In the last few weeks I folded quite a few studies and began honing in on the trouble spots. With a complex model like that you may have to fold for an hour or more before you get to the point where you can try out a solution to a design problem. Unlike with a computer there’s no save and revert, so if it doesn’t work you crumple up the paper and start again. This process can take some time.

By the start of the convention I was getting close. I’d completed several studies, although the best one, which I used for the model menu, was a bit sad looking and I didn’t have one worthy of putting into my exhibit. I’d created a CP and pretty much worked out most of the issues except for a critical series of steps steps to separate the head from the shoulders. With animals this is very important to the whole pose and attitude of the model; it can make or break it. For this model there’s alot of layers at that point, and crumpling it down was the easy way out.

We had to take off early on Saturday to go to a wedding on Long Island, so by Saturday night I’d run out of time to work on it any further. When I went to bed I meditated on it, which led to a lucid dream. When I woke I (felt like I) knew what to do.

When I teach supercomplex models soemtimes there’s only maybe two or five people in the class. This class was very full, to the point where I ran out of handouts and people had to share. And everyone in the room was actually and advanced folder too. When I got to the critical step I had all the proportions worked out and all the precreasing done, but had never really attempted the collapse before. So I told the class to do the collapse however they thought was best. Then I looked around at everyone’s result. I immediately saw that three people folded the correct solution. Everyone finished the class with a good looking model.

Since my Airplanes and Spaceships books in now with the publisher I’m in waiting mode. There will be some revisions, and the photography is still ahead, but it’ll probably be a year before it hits the shelves. I’m free to invest some creative energy in some other project. Since the response to the War Elephant was so strong I decided do an ebook with Brian of a half dozen or so complex to supercomplex models with a fantasy/mythology theme, including my War Elephant and Medieval Dragon.

I’m off to France and Switzerland in a few days for the Origami Creators Conference. That should be a good time and give me alot of opportunity to develop new ideas.

Recently OrigamiUSA announced a partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in its official attempt to break the world record for the largest display of origami elephants. Who knew that was even a category? The goal is to reach 35,000 origami elephants to bring attention to the 35,000 elephants that are killed each year for their ivory. So I happily contributed a few, my own design diagrammed in my book, made out of 25cm Marble Wyndstone, A.K.A. Elephant hide paper. This was something of an experiment since I usually don’t make ‘em that small, but they turned out quite successful. I finally got the wetfolding down for this model. It’s funny how they all come out a little different, how each has its own personality.

While I was at it I made a couple to put on my desk at work, one for the Westchester office and one for the Manhattan office. Whenever put origami on my desk at work someone asks if they can have it, so I have to keep making more.

I don’t know when or where the exhibition of all these origami elephants will be (maybe the Bronx Zoo, cuz that’s where the Wildlife Conservation Society has their offices), and frankly I can’t even imagine 35,000 folded paper elephants, so it should be something to see. I expect there’ll be an announcement when the time draws closer. Hopefully it will be effective in raising awareness, cuz obviously we’d all like living elephants to be around for a while. By coincidence I’m shopping for a new piano these days, and I wonder what they use for the white keys. As I understand it the only legit source of ivory left in the world is digging up Wooly Mammoth tusks from the permafrost in Siberia.

Another Origami USA convention has come and gone. A great time as usual folding and hanging with my origami friends. John, Brian, Beth, Paul, Sri, Jason, Robert, everyone was there. I also had a meeting with my publisher and finally have a contract in hand for my next book. Just gotta get a few fine points in the rider and we should be all squared away.

The venue for this year was St. John’s University in Queens, and it turned out to be a very nice place. Beautiful campus, and everything was in two buildings close together. Free parking too. There were a few good restaurants in the neighborhood, including a Mexican place that served a drink that was a margarita with an upside-down beer in it, attached to the rim of the glass by a special adapter.

One really nice thing was that the gallery this year was in a hall with great natural lighting, so everything looked much better than it used to at FIT.

I had a whole bunch of new models for my exhibit. The main thing was something I’m calling Flower Balls. The idea is to create a flower-like tessellation and then fold it into a polyhedron to create the effect that people like to do out of modulars, but with a single sheet of paper. I got inspired and started with it last summer in Ohio, and by MIT in the fall I had a Cube and Dodecahedron Flowerball, along with 4- and 5-petal flower tessellation units. In the last month or so I extended the approach to create 6- and 8-petal flowers, and combined them to form a bunch of Archimedean solids, namely a Truncated Tetrahedron, Cuboctahedron, Truncated Octahedron and Truncated Cube. Only downside is people don’t always get that it’s a single sheet.

I taught a couple classes. One was Airplanes and Spaceships II – intermediate level models from the upcoming book. Went over well, go thru five of them in a 105 minute class. The other was the Flowerballs, and this time I had crease patterns to use a guide while I laid out the concept and some examples. On Monday John Montroll did a rare class, on the topic of diagramming on the computer.

All in all a great, fun convention. I’m guessing OUSA will want to go back to St. John’s next year.

A little while back I contributed a few origami models to a new production of Animals Out of Paper, put on by the Hudson Stage company and playing in Armonk, NY for one more week. I would have really liked to have seen this one, since I really enjoyed last year’s production in Manhattan by a different group. It’d be great to compare and contrast, and see how much of it comes from the script and how much from the interpretation of the performers, and how much from the set and all that.

But alas I’ve been too busy. Last night we had a birthday party for Michelle. Next week my band has a gig. Last weekend I went out to see the Miles Davis movie, which I must say was singularly fascinating, insightful, and most excellent, but not at all what you’d expect. It centers on the period in this career when Miles wasn’t playing trumpet all (kinda like AOoP, come to think of it), and comes of as sort a cross between Give My Regards to Broad Street and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

So in lieu of my review of Animals Out of Paper, here’s what they have to say in the paper of record: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/nyregion/in-hudson-stages-animals-out-of-paper-hearts-unfolded.html

I’ve gotten in the habit of folding two of any model when I have a commission, so I have one to keep. Here’s one of my Snapping Turtles, and I think it’s the nicest one I’ve ever folded. Didn’t even have to wet-fold it. The annual convention is coming up in just over a month, and I want to have some new stuff to exhibit. Lots of ideas but I have to make the time. At least I have this Turtle. And I have a dozen or more new models from the last year, mostly airplanes and spaceships developed between Ohio and Boston. I’ll have to check in and see what’s good with that collection. But I kind of feel like it’s time to move on and tackle some new subjects. I guess we’ll see what I come up with.