Lister’s article mentions two pioneers who would be very influential in the later development of tessellation: Resch and Fujimoto.

Resch was more interested in architectural applications. In origami, his work would be more influential in what is usually referred to as “origami corrugation”

Fujimoto designed more traditional origami, but origami that was unusually geometric and abstract. Many involved pleats that collapse at their intersections to form petals or scales:

In some cases the pleats collapse in the same direction around their intersection , i.e., all clockwise or all counterclockwise, to form a new structure  – a twist fold.The above images and more useful  information on tessellation can be found at Origami USA’s online publication The Fold.

This is from Alex Bateman’s old site SpunDreams, which was a huge influence on me when I began folding tessellations.

This is the stuff that got me started with Origami tessellation around the year 2000. Alex’s work was influenced by Chris Palmer’s Shadowfolds, which in turn were influenced by Fujimoto’s twist folds. I spent countless hours reverse engineering these designs. This is how I learned tessellation, and it’s not a bad way to do it, for while there are a lot more styles of folding that are called “tessellations” these days, just about everything you need to know about how to fold them can be learned from these earlier, Fujimoto inspired designs. And the patterns are often clearer and easier to understand.

All of which leads me ultimately to the real reason for this post…

I had been meaning for quite some time to create a sort of catalog of twist folds. With each new mask and tessellation, I try to do something I’ve never done before, and I’ve often created new twists to attack increasingly complex challenges. Now, you would think that since all of my pieces are folded on 60 degree triangle grids and there are only so many ways pleats could intersect on such a matrix, there should be a limited number of twists necessary to accommodate them. You’d be surprised.

I want to document the twists I’ve used, their characteristics and how I’ve used them. I’ve decided to break up this catalog into smaller easy to digest installments, maybe two or three twists in each post, or even just one if it is a particularly interesting twist. Whether it’s one twist or more, the posts will be called “Twist of the Day”, and this is the first.

The first TOD must be the most essential twists for a tessellator – the triangle twist and the hexagon, or hex twist (I’m only going to be dealing with triangular grids, since that’s what I work with). There’s a video tutorial for folding a hex twist here, which also has a link to a video tutorial for folding a triangle grid. Here’s a pdf from Eric Gjerde  with instructions for folding triangle, hexagonal and square twists. I should provide a tutorial of my own, but for this post I’m just going to let others do the work for me.

These two twists are fundamental to any beginner in origami tessellation. They are the nuts and bolts of all my work, and if you’re starting out, you would do well to practice them until you can fold them in your sleep.

I’ll leave you with some images of my earlier work, from around 2005-2006, that feature these two twists.

They also have the advantage of taking much less time to complete. They may take two or three hours to fold, but that is a far cry from some of the very large, involved models that I’ve done which may take two or three weeks, or in some cases several months.

As an antidote to some of the larger projects I’ve been preparing for the past few months, I’ve done several tiny tessellations to break up the drudgery of precreasing very, very big grids. I’ve created a new set on my Etsy shop to sell these cute little tessellations and you can check them out here.

It was revealed to me that I had been featured on the popular website This Is Colossal. Colossal indeed – the effect was immediate. On Sunday, 25 people visited this blog, a perfectly satisfactory number for a blog which is updated maybe once a year. Monday, over 1000 visitors.

Design blog Inhabitat and artist blog Artist a Day have also picked up the coverage, the latter with a brief bio by permission. I must thank everybody involved for this attention, particularly Artist a Day, whose express purpose is to highlight the work of often under-exposed artists, and connect people who love art with people who create it.

A side effect of all this attention: This blog has followers now, which means I’m going to have to start blogging in earnest. There are a lot of things to talk about.

    All this is just to say that I’ve been working but have not felt the urge to make public all my origamic convulsions. When I have gathered my courage to finish the big, complicated projects that have been fermenting in my head I’ll put them out there, and we’ll see if they are seedless or not.

   Whatever comes of it all, I’ve found another place for my stuff online. Makers Market. From the people who brought you MAKE and Boing Boing, it’s a curated store for folks with a more tech-y, science-y, (let’s be frank, geeky) bent. My kind of folks. And here is my store : origamijoel.makersmarket.com . Admittedly, it is a little sparce at the moment, but I’m working on it. One nice feature at Makers Market is a blog that creators have in their store. I’ve posted a little thing about folding a grid, something that should be old hat to the tessellators out there, but which might be of some interest to someone stumbling across my work and wondering what the heck that’s all about.

      By the way, I still have my Etsy store, but I’m sort of migrating over to Makers bit by bit to see if it’s a good fit. Makers Market is still in beta, but it looks like a really good place and I think it will take off.

      But enough about me and my nonsense. I’d like to take a moment to point out and give my appreciation to some of things Flickr friends have been up to.

   Lately Philip (oschene on Flickr), in addition to his usual, elegantly mind-bending origami:   

Has taken to time/space continuum bending photo manipultaion:

So why not combine the two to make mind/time/space bending meta-dimensional photo-origami?

    And of course he provides PDFs and crease patterns so you can try these things yourself. Philip’s work pushes the boundaries of traditional origami, but he is still very much within the spirit of the craft. His origami is not just about creating a beautiful object , but about the beautiful creation of an object. Origami is, afterall, an object and an act, and Philip’s designs satisfy on both the elegance of the execution and the outcome. You have to try folding them yourself.

     This one escaped my notice for a while but I was delighted when I finally saw it. Someone else is doing tessellated faces! A Flickrite who calls himself “Blue Paper”.

I don’t really know anything about him except that he seems to know his way around the inside of a pigand he’s got some serious folding skills.

 Blue Paper credits my masks as inspiration, but he has a style and aesthetic of his own that comes through quite clearly. His masks have great personality and character in an economical use of folding. They are fantastic and I can’t wait to see what’s next from him! 

 Lastly, I’d like to give a nod to an excellent folder on Flickr , Jun Mitani.

Not much I can say here; the work speaks for itself. Go to his photostream and wade in. It is especially interesting to go back to the earliest entries, only a little more than a year ago, and see the ideas develop and refine over time.

I mean, just look at this:

or this:

And that’s just from a few minutes of browsing. There are pages and pages of this stuff.

  go on, take a look… but make sure you have plenty of free time on your hands.

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).

             

  This is Daniel’s version of the model:  

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.             

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:

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…

    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.

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.

I’ve been asked also if repetitive folding causes carpal tunnel syndrome. I suppose it could aggravate this condition if done improperly, but I find the stresses occur mostly in the fingers, not in the wrist. I get sore wrists the same way most office workers do, at the keyboard. I guess people like to imagine that the pursuit of art may be fraught with risk of physical harm – like papercuts and carpal tunnel syndrome. Origami is admittedly a rather tame art, one of the few that can be practiced on a bus ride or in the waiting room at a doctor’s office (ventriloquism and interpretive dance are others. Bronzecasting, stonecarving and pottery are not recommended). It requires little equipment beyond the medium itself (generally speaking, paper) and the digital appendages most were born with. And the origami muse seldom requires a blood offering from her supplicant.

These are occasionally asked questions (OAQ), back to the FAQ.

Q: Do you use special paper?

A: Yes and No. I use “elephant hide” – what is marketed in the U.S. as Wyndstone Marble – for almost all of my masks and many of my tessellations. I’ve been using it for maybe three years now and I’ve gotten rather comfortable with it. It has certain properties that I like: it is strong, flexible, creases sharply, responds well to wet-folding and it is pH-neutral. It’s not “special paper” though, at least not especially made for folding masks. It’s actually produced as endpaper and flyleaf stock for book manufacturers and for use in printing certificates and such. It just happens to work well for folding too. Any paper with similar characteristics will do. I’ve used banner paper and brown postal wrap which come in rolls and can be cut to any size. Wyndstone marble is becoming increasingly difficult to find in the States, however, and any alternative would be desirable. But when many people ask about “special paper”, they are looking at all the lines in the paper that I’m using making a tight triangular grid and they really want to know, is there special paper with those grids already in it. No, there isn’t. Those are creases and you gotta fold ‘em yourself. Period.

Now you don’t have to fold tessellations from paper that has been prefolded with a grid, but for most tessellations, including the sort that I like to do, it sure makes things easier. It takes some time to fold a grid, but the investment is worth it later on. There are no satisfactory means I know of for making the grid mechanically: scoring damages the paper where it needs to be strong, impressing or embossing lines would only allow the paper to “hinge” in one direction, whereas a creased line can be reverse folded to make it neutral. But you don’t need a mechanical means anyway. Folding a grid is not all that bad. It takes time, sure. But it isn’t difficult and once you get the hang of it, it can be a restful, meditative activity. And it’s a good way to get to know your paper.

Q: You must be very patient

A: Again, that’s not a question, it’s an assumption.

It’s like many activities that people do for enjoyment: crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, knitting, and such. To someone who doesn’t share your interest, these things may seem tedious and boring. But if it’s something you enjoy, you do it. Patience is only necessary if you aren’t having fun. And if you’re not having fun, why are you doing it in the first place?