Zing Blog 2

So way back in early June I was invited to participate in an exhibit Origami as Fine Art being held at Kinokuniya Book Store in NYC just off of Bryant Park. Kinokuniya is a great place, BTW, full of all things Japanese, from manga, anime and robot kits to origami books and specialty papers, and all kinds of other stuff. The exhibit is really nicely put together by Sok Sung and Paul Frasco, and features a great variety of models from a good number of artists. I’m honored to be included among this elite set. The exhibit runs for another two weeks, until mid-July. You can learn all about the exhibit here:

http://origamifineart.com/

The curators asked me to contribute a Zeppelin. This was on the list of models I’d been meaning to refold out of nicer paper anyway. Last year at convention I picked up a couple sheets of paper specifically for this. The paper is blue, and strong and heavy like Wyndstone, but sparkly like it has flakes of mica embedded into it like Origamido paper sometimes does. I have no idea where it came from or what its called, but it turned out to be up to the task.

As I mentioned before, this is a very challenging and labor intensive model, and I only ever made one successful instance a few years back. I first made a study out of draft paper, and then commenced to fold two Zeppelins in parallel. The thinking was, if I messed one of them up I’d still have a good’n, and if they both came out good I’d have one for myself. The prefolding took a couple sessions and the collapsing took a couple more, since I wetfolded as I went, doing first the nose, and then collapsing the tail. This was all a very delicate operation. I also custom built two new stands for the models. As June progressed I went from staying up late once or twice a week to work on these to practically every night.

In the end I had a bit of a problem with the model staying puffed out at the transition from main body to the tail. I realize now that I should have wetfolded an internal flange of accumulated layers of paper to relieve the stress at the point. I may yet go back and fold yet another Zeppelin now that I know what I’m doing, and so I can be at peace about it. For one of my models I tried to wetfold the hull at that point. This turned out to be a mistake, and I ripped the paper pressing it from the inside with chopstick to shape it. At least I was able to patch it so it doesn’t show. The other one turned out better an the problem was largely solved by good ol’ fashioned wrestling the paper into submission. I had to re-open the tail after it had been wetfolded, but it worked out okay. So the better model I donated to the exhibit, and the other one is the one you see photographed here.

I folded new high-quality versions of my new models Timber the Dog and Sophie the Cat for convention, as well as few to give to my friend. As mentioned before, these models were inspired by the logo of the animal adoption service Timber’s Legacy (timberslegacy.org). The versions you see here are folded from a 12” square of Canson and a 10” or so square of Wyndstone respectively.

I taught both of these models at convention. I rated them as high intermediate level of complexity. I think that was pretty much on the mark. I taught them in a single 45 minute class for each. There were very few people in over their heads and everyone was able to get the model done in the time allotted. I found out that origami people are more cat people than dog people. The class for Sophie was filled to the limit of 25 and then some. Since it’s a new model and not yet diagrammed, I taught by demoing it with a large sheet of paper. With the larger class you spend more time walking around to be sure everyone’s got it right, but it was okay. In fact feedback was very positive, and I’d say I have two more models for a future book.

As mentioned previously, I had a great OUSA convention this year. If you’re interested there are lots of pics online here. One of the things that made it great for me is I had a lot of new models: Timber the Dog, Sophie the Cat, my Giant Squid, Cuttlefish, a new rendition of my Zeppelin, my Penfractal Dodecahedron Tessellation, and my Stellated Dodecahedron. I hope to say something about each of these, starting with the Stellated Dodecahedron.

Most people make origami polyhedra using the modular approach, putting together lots of triangles or whatever to create a shape. To me this is not very interesting since the assembly dominates the folding, and in my view it misses the essence of doing origami. Much more challenging is to fold a polyhedron from a single sheet. In fact it’s so challenging I only know three artists who work in this area: John Montroll, T.J. Norvell, and myself. John has written several books on the subject and has made it challenging indeed to find terra incognita in this space.

My Stellated Dodecahedron is the result of a long and arduous quest, one of a handful of advanced polyhedra I’ve been working on for the last few years. Now I can finally cross it off my list. In case you don’t know, the stellated dodecahedron is a shape based on the regular dodecahedron, which is a platonic solid composed of twelve (“dodec” means two and ten) regular pentagons. The stellated version replaces each face with a five-sided pyramid, resulting in a star-like shape (“stellated” means starlike) composed of sixty triangles.

I made several attempts at it a few years back, but it was beyond my skill at the time, and I only barely managed to make one out of a giant sheet of foil, and it didn’t hold together too well. This year I was determined to finally make an exhibit-quality one for the convention. I’d been working feverishly on Zeppelins (more on that in another post) but found the time to create this as well. In the process I think I leveled up as a folder.

The hard part of doing this model was closing it all off at the end. My previous version was made out of a square, and this created the problem of having all the flaps being different shapes and very difficult to deal with. For the new attempt I began with a pentagon sheet of paper rather than a square. The first step was to fold a pentagon out of a square anyway, so I just cut off the leftover bits rather than fold them under. Now when I got to the end I had a nice array of identical flaps that made perfect tabs, and I was able to use a twist-lock to finish the model.

I folded the Stellated Dodecahedron from a 50 cm regular pentagon of Marble Wyndstone (a.k.a. Elephant Hide) paper. It took me five sessions of several hours each, and this after I made a study out of draft paper. The first two were just to do the precreasing (you can see the CP below). The next one was to fold the bulk of the model, up to the close. At this point it became clear that I would not be able to close my study model because the paper was too soft, and I’d have to just go for it. Wyndstone is thicker and I’d precreased everything strongly with a bone folder, so it looked like it would have enough “pop”.

Once I got it got it collapsed there was some springiness that wanted to push the model apart from within. I applied a drop of water to every concave vertex, the ones where six triangles come together. Then I wrapped the whole thing tight with tape and string and let it dry overnight. Next morning – the day of convention – I unwrapped it, not knowing how the wetfolding had worked. To my delight it came out perfectly. The final model was tight and strong like a soccer ball. In fact I like it so much this model has now taken the spot on top of my piano previously occupied by the only modular I’ve ever liked well enough to actually fold – Tom Hull’s Five Intersecting Tetrahedra.

I want to fold another one of these soon, for an upcoming exhibit on Long Island. Between doing this and the Zeppelins, I’m now seriously considering getting a KNK Zing or a Craft Robo. Having a machine pre-score my paper from a .eps file would seriously reduce the amount of time I have to spend prefolding, plus it would guarantee everything to come out as precise as can be.

Here’s my prototype of a Penfractal Dodecahedron Tessellation. It’s a 3-D evolution my Penfractal Tessellation. Each face of the dodecahedron is subdivided into six smaller pentagons. The model also makes a reasonable representation of the dodecahedral analog of the tesseract, albeit in 3-d hyperbolic space rather than true 4-d space (trust me on this; I looked it up). Now that my proof of concept is done, I want make another version that’s more ball shaped by making the tessellated sub-faces bulge out. And you should know that although I almost always work with a square sheet, I’m considering using a pentagon for this one, so I don’t have to deal with all different ways to handle the unused paper in the corners. I think the subject may justifiy this.

I’ve been folding lots of other stuff too. I’ve perfected my dog and cat and made a whole bunch over the weekend. A few are to give away, and others are for my exhibit and the convention model menu. Soon as I get around to it I’ll take some pictures with the good camera. I’ve also been invited to contribute a model to an upcoming exhibit. More on that soon. The model they want is my Zeppelin. This is one of my hardest models. In fact I’ve only really successfully folded one. I’ve been meaning to fold one out of better paper for a long time. So now I’m making two, one for me and one for the exhibit. Luckily I diagrammed the first half of the model (the precreasing part) so I don’t have to work that out.

If I get that done in time, my next model will be a new attempt at a one-sheet Stellated Dodecahedron, since it uses the same base as the Dodecahedron Tessellation.

This weekend we’re having the first real hot weather of the year, in the mid to upper 80’s. It’s also the weekend of the carnival at the kids’ school. I helped out last night at the Fathers’ Club Food Tent, and will be helping out tonight and tomorrow in the games booths. These school events get more and more fun as I get to know more parents and families. There’s a great sense of community that I never felt in the old school. Plus it’s interesting, but I guess not surprising, how Establishment it is. The local cops and firemen are all out showing support. Heck some of them are parents of the school. I’m still conditioned from the days of my youth to see cops as a threat, so it feels weird to learn they’re normal, friendly guys.

I have alot of vacation time to use up this summer, and so I’m taking my first summer Friday to do some origami so I have some new models for convention. I have few things that I’m working on. First is a pair of new animals, a dog and a cat. I’d been thinking about doing a dog and cat for a while, but they’re pretty challenging subjects. There are lots of cats and dogs out there, ranging from simple and stylized to realistic and complex, capturing a wide range of moods and styles. Plus cats and dogs are very familiar to humans. It won’t do to simply have the right configuration of limbs; the model has to say something.

I found my way in to approach these subjects as a request from a friend. She had recently created a website for an animal adoption service in Queens – Timber’s Legacy (timberslegacy.org). The website logo features a dog and cat in silhouette and she asked me if I could fold them as gift for the lady who runs the service.

The idea that the animals are sitting allowed me to focus more on the overall shape and sculptural aspects rather than worrying much about the base and where the points for all the legs would come from. The dog in particular has pointy ears, and you don’t see that much in origami dogs. Once I had the dog worked out, I figured the cat would be a simple variation, but it turned out the pretty different. Not only is the head and face totally different, but the long tail required a whole new geometry and base. Finally, the body posture, neck and shoulders were different enough to have to come up with a new treatment.

I’ve been folding lots of cats and dogs the last few weeks. They’re not too complex and take less than a half hour to fold. I’m still refining the details, particularly on the cat, before I attempt to fold exhibit quality ones out of good paper.

The other thing I’ve been working on is an approach to combine polyhedra with tessellations. I came up with a successful prototype for a sixty-sided shape based on a dodecahedron. More on that soon.