Semi-annual update

I see the last post was in January, my how tempus fugits. That entry was an unabashed attempt to push my tawdry wares on Etsy, and whadda-ya-know, so is this one. Much of the collection had been travelling in the interim from one show to another, most recently to the art fair in Bellevue Washington last month. A photographer from the area, Michael Norton, has some images from the origami exhibition there. You can probably tell which ones are mine – there’s a tessellation and an undulating, pleated “spinal” doohickey from the lovely and talented Christine Edison - I believe that’s the inestimable Robert Lang’s Irish Elk at the end there – and the four pointed corrugated thingy might belong to the venerable Goran Konjevod. The other animals I cannot identify but perhaps one of my dozens of readers be able to.

From the end of last year until last month the Cooper collection has been floating around from one exhibiton to another: From Rhode Island (that’s my stuff way in the back (and thanks again Ray for those great 3D shots (for the uninitiated, you have to do that “Magic Eye” stare to see the 3D effect))) to Ohio to New York. There are still a few pieces in Spain for the upcoming exhibition in Zaragoza this fall - I wish I could be there in person (putting me in the unusual position of being jealous of my own origami, which seems to be more well-travelled than I am). But as I was saying, the season of exhibitions is (mostly) over and all of the touring pieces have (mostly) come home, and now they will be available for purchase by you, you lucky devil you.

But lest you think shameless self-promotion is my only reason for being here, I would also like to take this opportunity to promote the work of others (who just happen to be promoting my work too, but that’s beside the point).

        Daniel Kwan Whirls CP      Joel Cooper's Whirls
Folder Daniel Kwan has recently reverse engineered one of my designs (imaginatively entitled “Whirls”) and created a crease pattern for it. Click on the thumbnail above and see his CP in all its dichromatic glory.

  This is Daniel’s version of the model:   Daniel Kwan's Whirls

As near as I can tell he’s got the design precisely right, without any input from me, mind you, he just looked at the pictures I posted of my own model and figured it out. He asked permission, of course, to post the CP he created. I heartily endorse this behavior since I am always pleased to see someone else folding my designs, but I just don’t like to create instructions for them. I don’t create diagrams or CPs and I don’t use them. So if someone else is willing to do that work, I’m all for it.

A while ago, another folder, Andrew Hudson, did a deconstruction of one of my masks and likewise created a CP of his efforts.           Mask study   Andrew Hudson's Mask    

That’s my original on the left and Andrew’s reconstruction on the right. You can click through the picture to the Flickr page and find a link to the PDF of Andrew’s CP for this model. You may notice that the model here is not quite finished but I can tell that Andrew has figured out the folds. I have not yet seen any evidence that anyone has successfully folded a complete model, though. If anyone reading this feels emboldened by the challenge, why not go out and try to fold this baby for yourself.

And if anyone feels emboldened to do their own reverse engineering, may I suggest this model:Satyr

That’s a crease pattern I would surely like to see. I’ll give you a little hint to get started – get a really big piece of paper…

Shopping Indie

  My little Etsy shop has been featured on Shop Indie Online , you should go there and take a look around. Many Etsy artists are featured and there is some wonderful stuff to be seen, it truly is impressive, the amount of creativity that’s going around. They say the economy is making handmade stuff more popular. The economy is the ubiquitous bete noire these days, but hard times do tend to make people creative. Even in the worst of times, one’s life needn’t be bereft of art. If you don’t have the scratch to buy any indie art, at least look around and I’m sure you will be inspired to make something yourself. Art, after all, is not a luxury, it’s a necessary element that makes life more than just living.

    On another note – I hate packing peanuts!

Just thought I’d mention that. As some of you know, while folding occupies much of my time, it does not pay the rent. To that end, I have a regular job in the acquisitions department of a college library. This fulfills another consuming interest of mine – books. I get to spend the day surrounded by books! I get to open boxes of new books every day! Wheeee!

     Except every now and then, like today for instance, some of those books come packaged in boxes filled with aerated puffs of styrofoam evil commonly known as “packing peanuts”. In the course of shipping, they get jostled around a bit within the box, rubbing against the books and each other, building up a charge of static electricity until upon their release from their cardboard confines they have become the clingiest, stickingest, annoyingest substance known to humankind. In this dry, winter weather, the static cling is nigh irresistable. These bits of hellish fluff will levitate from the box and chase you around the room like the Furies pursuing Orestes. They stick to the books and work their way between the pages. They infest. Do not ship with packing peanuts!

I feel better now.

Find me on Etsy

   I’m not a very good blogger. I’ll admit that. Of course looking at my posts and the interval of time between them should make that obvious.

   I like to fold. I’ve been developing my own techniques towards that purpose for something like six years now and I still manage surprise myself with what I can find in a simple piece of paper. Origami tessellation is, after all, a niche within a niche and by all rights it should have exhausted itself by now. But I keep folding.

   But I’m not that good at talking about what I do or how I do it. Folding the way I do has become as second nature as signing my own name. I don’t think about “reverse folds” and “rabbit ears” and “bird bases” when I fold and I don’t think any of those terms would apply anyway. I don’t know what words would apply.

    So don’t count on a book of instructions or diagrams coming from me: it’s not that I’m trying to hide anything or that I am possessive of my designs. I just don’t know how to do that. I have great esteem for those who create and encourage others to create with them; artists who can teach. My friend Philip is a great example of this ideal. I wish I could do what he does.

   People seem to like my origami, but I don’t think I’m much of an origamist. I’m just a struggling artist who stumbled onto an unusual way to get images out of my head and onto paper (or rather into paper). The creases I make are a meandering path into unknown territory, and the path is never the same the second time. If I could lead others down that path, or better yet, help them find their own, I would.

   Speaking of meandering, all of this is merely poetical justification for the more prosaic purpose of shameless promotion. I don’t have instructions or diagrams but I do have the origami art itself. Once they are folded, I have no use for them, but hopefully someone else would. I try to make them look good, as I would with artwork of any other media, and  each piece is one of a kind. I have opened a shop on Etsy to sell the fruits of my paper-folding perambulations. You can still go to my Flickr site, of course, if you just want to see what I’m up to. But now their is a home for pieces you can have for your very own. Buy one, hang it on your wall, scrutinize it, take it apart and try to put it back together again. Help me finance my paper habit.