Excellent Holiday Gift-Jeff Rutzky’s Kirigami Book

 

Jeff’s book would make a great holiday gift.  It is nicely balanced and covers several styles of kirigami.  He has a wide array of designs and artists, which gives a nice sampling.  My favorite bit (although I liked it all) was the pictures of artist’s work.  They give one a level to aspire to, even as we realize that it likely isn’t in our innate constitution.  They sell it at Barnes and Nobles.  Here is the online site. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&z=y&EAN=9780760792278&itm=1&afsrc=1

His website which is a melange of his interests and photographs is here http://homepage.mac.com/jrutzky/iMovieTheater1.html

 

 

As I bought Jeff’s book a bit ago I’ve been meaning to try something.  Finally just looking at the pictures inspired me to grab a utility knife(my exacto ran away with the spoon it seems) and sketch something out. I sketched two intertwined growths (in my mind was the folksong “Barbara Allen, specifically the line “They grew and grew up the old churchyard the red rose and the briar.” Well the end result I found endlessly amusing the shadows were a hoot to play with and I was way to visually enthused. 

Columbia Exhibit Pictures

It took awhile, but here they are.  This is a selection of photos from the exhibit “it’s all in the fold” coordinated by Bill Drendel.  My pieces are in the second row.  The third row starts with models folded by Ty Perez and then has Chris Palmer’s work.  The fourth row is Bradford Smith, Lang, and LaFosse.  The menger sponge was folded by Joshua Koppel and the tessellations on the wall are done by a Mrs. Hanson whose husband was also in the exhibit. 

Although there was a lot of fascinating and beautiful artwork my favorite pieces were…

They are Nishimura circles, a collection of simple, but elegant architectural folds from Peter Seller?, and a silk tessellation from Palmer.

The rest of the photos will be posted to flickr within a few weeks.

Science, Math, and Origami

This is just a few articles I stumbled across in surfing.  They are not the newest out there and I’m sure you’ve read the article about origami(including Hull, Lang, and Kamiya), but you may find them interesting if you havn’t seen them.

http://jdsde.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/11/2/262

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0917/p01s03-woap.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn5033

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/jul/origami/?page=1

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/19/070219fa_fact_orlean (this has a cute little cartoon)

 http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392855

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20051224/mathtrek.asp

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060617/mathtrek.asp

Easy modular sites for platonic solids and other stuff for teachers

http://www.arttowermito.or.jp/johokuchu/johokuchu3.html

http://www.paperfolding.com/math/

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Origami.html (this has a great animated sequence folding the Crane and beyond)

http://itlab.coe.wayne.edu/elearningdimensions/end/resources.html

http://www.georgehart.com/

This would be an amazing course to teach

http://www.carliner-remes.com/jacob/math/project/

Modular Kirigami

Once I realized a template worked for the knappa lamp I didn’t feel the need to make it.  Just playing with the previous design.  This will probably end my kirigami amusement as I don’t like all the cutting.  Little bits of paper are all over my place.

Attempts to create the Ikea lamp

After seeing this lamp posted on Eric’s website http://www.origamitessellations.com/2007/02/21/knappa-klover-lamp-from-ikea/   I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the template would look like.  As the pictures show I was wrong, but I liked some of the consequences so I’ll post one of my templates.  Have fun.  You need 8 cut out, you are making a cube, although it does resemble a sphere.  I have more potential templates, but will post them later.  The difference between the green and tan is that I creased the green semicircles. If you connect the semicircles internally you get a very strong finished polyhedron.  I did it with a plastic cover divider and it was thrown around and had nary a scratch.  The second template I was sure would work, but I came up with an ocatahedron base, not an icosahedron.

Disclaimer:  This was so easy I’m sure everybody and their mother has designed this.

Update:  The second template I made was correct.  Someone found a link to a manual and it’s posted on Eric’s site through the comments.  The slot is horizontal, not at a 45 degree incline and the circles are shifted to the side of the vertices.