origamijoel

   The time has flown by. I have been folding, but I have been delinquent in posting the results of my paper manipulations. I still have trouble showing work that is unfinished or not finished to my satisfaction. I’ve always been like that, which is why I worked in the dark, so to speak, for so long.

   I have been struggling with grids on a horizontal alignment (which may not make sense to most people). Compare the grid underlying this recent mask:   

   with this older design:

   Perhaps you can see that the one set of lines in the latter grid is parallel to the vertical axis of the face, and in the former, a set is perpendicular to the vertical. The grid is merely rotated 30 degrees, but the new orientation has many unexpected consequences on the way the face is formed. I have had to rethink almost all of the techniques for face shaping that I had developed on a vertical grid when working on a horizontal. And I’ve worn out a lot of paper trying, with few satisfactory results. But I think the challenge has kept me from getting stale.

   That first mask, “Pharaoh”, by the way, will hopefully be arriving in Croatia soon, for an origami exhibition at the Krapina Gallery. They are showing origami this year as part of their annual Haiku Festival.

   Many more pieces are currently on display closer to home (closer to my home anyway) at the county courthouse in beautiful downtown Lawrence, Kansas. Two walls in the treasurers office have been dedicated to the display of artwork by a different local artist every month. This month (May) is mine.

    Here’s one wall:

   and here’s the other:

   More images of the individual pieces can be seen as a set on flickr.