Origami Exhibition

At times I am a tad bit slow to post.  Friday night an origami exhibit opened.  It isn’t large, but is beautifully curated by Bill Drendel.  Quite a few well known artists and regional origami enthusiasts/artists are represented: Lang, LaFosse, Nishimura, Chris Palmer, Bradford, Ty Perez, Joshua Koppel, moi, and a whole lot more. 

It’s All In The Fold:  More Than Just Origami

July 27-August 25, 2007

Opening: Friday, July 27th, 5:30-7:30

It’s All In The Fold-More than just Origami is an exhibition that takes a world view of the way paper transforms itself when folded.  More than an amusement, origami today also teaches mathematics and geometry.  It’s more than just cranes and snowflakes.  Try tessellations or tetrahedrons, dodecahedrons and other polygons.  Origamic furniture, folded paper lamps, airplanes and a few naughty folds are all on the horizon.  Chicago and national origami and international paper folding artists and teachers will amaze you the the dexterity of their folds.

Gallery hours 10am-6pm Monday thru Saturday

Columbia College of Chicago

Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts

The exhibit was lovely. Bill did an amazing job setting everything up.  Bradford’s circle creations were wonderful, but my absolute favorite was Nishimura’s circle creations.  I loved them from pictures, but in person the shifting shadows are breathtaking.  Ty has a nice setup and there are pieces from LaFosse and Lang.  Chris Palmer had a lot of his fabric tessellations, which are my favorite things of his.  Joshua Koppel and his family was there, displaying a menger sponge.  A beautiful installation of origami cranes by Ty created a visual feast of moveable shadows.  There was also a computer display by Green Fuse Films’ Venessa Gould.  http://www.greenfusefilms.com/mingei.html

Ty’s mother Jody Perez is an amazing artist in another field and blogged about the exhibition, her entry has all the participants and links to websites.  http://judyperez.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-sons-first-exhibit.html

E.T. Container Instructions

Instructions below are predominantly pictoral.  Start from a square.  I recommend 8 inches or more paper that is the same color on both sides.

When you flip the container over you have a pyramid.  From the vertices you are pinching the sides together all the way to the tip of the pyramid.  Then you are going to pick a direction and have the three flaps going in one direction. (Refer to next photo)  The center bit does not lie flat.  It will form a smaller poofy pyramid as you keep push the three flaps.  For the picture after I reverse folded the outermost triangular crease.

Now flip over and you will tuck in the tips.

 

Then on a preexisting crease fold the new tip back in.  Do this on all three corners and turn over.  Minor amusement is you can keep making smaller and smaller poofie triangles in the center.  Hooray for fractal thingies (Example Below).

Lorenzo Marchi inspired me to play with the form.  He uses it to create what he calls a triangular masu box.   Directions can be found here.  He also has a blog he periodically updates.

http://flickr.com/photos/lorenzomarchi/227362566/in/set-72057594141547455/

http://lorenzomarchi.wordpress.com/

The Brilliance of Polly

(Left:  Ba-The physical manifestation of the immortal soul. 

Right:  Gryphon-Photo by CS Stevens)

I’ve been waiting to post this because I was hoping Polly would post a picture of the Hippocampus I got from her in New York.  I shall wait no more.  Polly Verity is an artist in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Brilliantly she incorporates wire, paper, and origami.  I can’t claim to be clever in art interpretation, but I know what amazes and moves me.  The integration of  mediums is unique and wholly her own.  Her pieces vary from the whimsical to a creature that embodies the soul.  My hippocampus, a mythical half horse/half sea serpent, expresses a magnificence that cannot be captured in two dimensions.  It has individual teeth and a tongue coming out.  The hippocampus ate raw meat and was not a cuddly critter, Polly Verity captured the essence in form and does impeccable work.  I highly recommend checking out her work on flickr and her website.  If you can, I advocate picking up a Polly of your own, if not, she is a great artist to know about.

www.polyscene.com/

http://flickr.com/photos/polyscene

Green Mask

Latest mask attempt.  Could be a male dryad, Gaia’s Consort, Green Man-naming it doesn’t really concern me, rather capturing the ebullance of greenary I saw in the North Woods.  There are a few more shots here.

http://flickr.com/photos/christine42/sets/72157594215763459/

Back from the Cold and Wet North Woods

Went to northern Wisconsin and found it to be chilly and wet.  C’est la vie.  It was still beautiful and GREEN.  While on the 8 hour drive up I precreased a bunch and read “Sin in the Second City” by Karen Abbott (Great read even if you havn’t ever been to Chicago, it captures an era beautifully.)  Here are a couple of results.

This came first.

Second round.

   

I was playing with a Nishimura Circle crease pattern mod and the paper wasn’t long enough to do a circle with the third angled set……so I made a double twist mobius strip.  It is held together with some horribly goopy elmers glue, which damaged the paper.  Much thanks to Ray Schamp for introducing so many of us to her work.

 

There are a few more, but I don’t want to seem too obsessive compulsive;P

Count?

This is something I am going to play with, but I wanted to post the tessellation before I potentially ruined it.  The finished tess is about 6-7 inches tall.  I really like the back backlit, which is what is posted.

 On a completely seperate note…I have a new job:)  I will be working in a fairly blue collar area on the North side of Chicago.  The principal seems very nice and I am excited.  It is housed in an old city college building (the old Wright College) and is being renovated this summer.  I will be teaching mostly geometry and something else, possibly A.P. Stats.  I’m glad about teaching geometry, as so far it is my favorite subject to teach.  Now I am off to Wisconsin.

Mask Maker, Mask Maker, Make Me a Mask

As stated previously Joel aided my mask endeavor over the weekend in New York.  The two masks I did with the sheet creased by Jane, Bekah, and I were posted, but I wanted to try to expand on a larger grid to try to tessellate around the face.  Arrrrrgh!  Not so easy (not that I thought it was), the direction of creases take on a whole new meaning.  I accidently expanded the features so I didn’t have as much extra paper to play with. 

I reverted a little in that it is not secured with as many internal twists as I was shown and has some features obtained by wet folding (eyebrows), so it does not have the structural integrity of Joel’s masks. 

This is going to be irksome…points of struggle are/will be eyes, direction of creases, eyebrows, cheek structure.  Ideas are cheap, those I have, execution of said ideas… a whole ‘nother dinosaur.

More shots here www.flickr.com/photos/christine42