I just had to make a link here to what looks like an extraordinary resource: Pattern in Islamic Art. There are collected in one site thousands of images of Islamic decorative artwork from a variety of sources, all copyright free and available for download. You can search for architectural samples by region, illustrations  and diagrams from published works, historical samples from museum collections and more. Too much to see… an incredible resource.

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.

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…

  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.

   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.

More than one person has asked if I had ever gotten a papercut from folding. The people who ask this, I can only assume, have never folded paper before. No, I have never received a papercut from origami, and I don’t know anyone who has. I am reminded of this question which arose at the exhibition in Long Island, by an injury sustained today at work. I get papercuts all the time where I work at the library, I have three such cuts on my fingers right now: one above each thumbnail and one on the side of my left pinky finger. And no, although I work at the library, they weren’t from handling books. I work in acquisitions and the cuts came from opening boxes the books came in. Cardboard boxes have little pity for sensitive fingers.

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?

 The aforementioned show at Stonybrook was an unusual experience for me. I have shown my work in exhibitions before, but this was the first time I had to be on hand for the entire show (The show was up for seven days, nine hours a day, it turned out to be a full time job). Fortunately, my wonderful wife was with me to offer moral support, fold some paper and field some of the questions that the attendees had. And there were a lot of questions.

The opening weekend coincided with the Origami Festival, with activities, classes and demonstrations for devotees of the folding arts. I didn’t have any time to check these activities out, as I was tied to the exhibition room for the duration. It was very busy. I’m sure many people that weekend were hoping to get mask-folding instruction from me. Simply folding the preliminary grid in a piece of paper can take hours, and the process of making a mask from that grid is more a matter of creative improvisation with by than step-by-step instruction. So the first most frequently asked question, “how do you do that”, doesn’t have a short, concise answer like: fold corner A to corner B, leaf-fold this bit, rabbit-ear that bit, etc…

It’s more like: “how do you compose an etude for piano”  – not to get all self-aggrandizing, but each mask I do is basically an individual composition, based on techniques that I’ve adapted and honed specifically for working with paper in this way. Paper is a sculptural medium and folding is my preferred method for manipulating it. It is not step-by-step and I don’t keep diagrams or instructions for what I do, I just do it.

Some other questions that came up at the show:

Q: “Are they each from a single piece of paper?”

A: Yes – by far the most frequently asked question, and the easiest one to answer (I wish they all were simple yes/no questions). But it is usually followed up with “…because some of them look like they’re woven…” which is not actually a question, but an observation, and an implied invitation for me to elaborate on the masks’ construction. So I elaborate. It’s a technique that is both structural and ornamental. Parallel folds make pleats that open up to form the convexities of the face and intersect with each other around the face. Where they intersect, twist folds are formed on the back of the piece which help to keep the pleats closed. The pleats get pretty tightly packed together, and where they run parallel to each other, the space between them looks like an individual strip of paper from the front. Where twist folds occur on the back, it appears that the “strips” of paper are crossing under and over one another.

The piece above uses a “basket-weave” technique. On the back you would see large, “open-backed” hexagonal twists alternating with triangular twists. On the front you see the spaces between the folds as strips, and where they appear to weave is actually a twist fold seen from the back. A weave such as this not only looks nice, but it keeps all those intersecting pleats organized and helps the mask hold its shape.

Q: “How long do they take you to do?”

A: Another simple question without a simple answer. As a side note, although I get this question a lot and I understand the reason for it, it still seems kind of an odd thing to ask. People seldom ask painters how long a piece took to paint, or poets how long it took to write a poem. It could be the Art versus Craft thing. Or the Hobby versus Occupation thing. Whatever it is, the masks are complicated objects and people like to know how long it takes to do something complicated. I would probably ask the same question to someone who makes a model ship in a bottle or builds a scale replica of the Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks. It’s a natural question.

The problem is, how to answer the question. Just considering the time it takes to fold a piece when I know exactly what to do and I have a piece of paper that has been prefolded into a grid, may be a matter of say four or five hours. But then the paper does have to be prefolded, and what about all the time spent figuring out each design? The trial and error, combining and discarding various elements: eyes, noses, mouths, to see which fit and how the folds interact. And all the models that went before, from which elements and techniques have been distilled to contribute to new pieces. Not to mention the treatment of the paper before and after folding: dying, stamping, painting, glazing, shellac, gum arabic, polyurethane, etc. which also goes through many trials and many errors. There is an evolutionary process by which the weaknesses of some pieces are culled and the more interesting bits extracted to be recombined with new ideas to form new masks, which are then distilled once again to make new designs. I’ve been doing these masks for about five years now, and you could say that the pieces I do now take about five years to make (By this token, you could also say that the pieces I did a year ago only took four years to make, which would seem to imply that either my models are getting more complicated or my skills are in decline). You can see a bit of the evolutionary process in some of my pieces from the last two years:

This was my first attempt at a bearded mask, but when I actually got to the beard, I was at a loss as to what to do. So I left the “beard” undefined and it became sort of a collar instead.  

Here I’ve used almost exactly the same face but figured out one way to do a beard, a kind of twisty thing made of linked opened hex-twist variations, something I would come back to many times for a bit of texture. 

I’ve carried over much of the beard design, as well as the nose and the mouth, although the mouth has been redesigned a bit to get a mustache which the above mask lacked. The eyes are different, I introduced a new approach to make them more defined and curvilinear. 

I’ve taken the beard and the eyes from the previous mask with virtually no modification, but have changed the mouth to make it gape open and used a newly designed nose with flaring nostrils. The ornamental detailing at the top also defines the shape of the brow and forehead. 

There are a lot of diversions and dead ends along the way, but there are certain features that demonstrate a direct line of descent, and the final piece, “Poseidon”, could not exist without the pieces that proceeded him. So while it may only take a few hours to fold him, knowing how to fold him took years and thousands of creases. 

There are more questions to address, but I’ll have to get to them in future posts.

     I’ve just returned from the Origami Heaven folding festival and exhibition at Stony Brook University in Long Island. This event took place at the beautiful Wang Center for Asian Studies.

    I spent the last few months very busy preparing new pieces for not only this exhibition, but the OrigamiUSA convention which proceeded it just one month earlier. I’ve had too many shows in too short of a time and I’m looking forward to spending a day or two without folding anything at all. But I can’t rest for long. The fruits of all that finger flexing may be seen in this photo set on Flickr. If you go through the images, you might notice that they all have been captioned “this piece has been sold”. In fact, all but a very few items that I have done have been sold, donated, bartered, disassembled, destroyed or otherwise rendered unavailable to the general public. Which means I’ll have to make more stuff. I’ll probably create a set on Flickr to contain images of new pieces as I create them and while they are still available.

    I didn’t expect all this attention when two and a half years ago I decided to post images of my foldings. But since then, I’ve started to treat these pieces, not merely as diversions and novelties, but as individual pieces of artwork. And why not? I’m doing the same thing I would have been doing in any other sculptural medium – metal, wood, ceramic, stone. There is no reason paper should be inferior to any of these.

   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.

   My humble blog has just been linked by PolymerClayNotes - as one might expect, a site specializing in things polymer clayish, but also highlighting arts of other media. You should go there right now and have a look around. You are bound to find something to make you want to get up and create something. Thank you, Susan, for sending a little attention my way.

   The attention serves also to remind me that I haven’t posted here in a while, an embarassingly long while. My apologies for that. I have been folding, I assure you. I have in fact been experimenting with some new techniques that have been slow to bear fruit, but nonetheless will not let me go. I can be frustratingly single-minded that way. It’s entirely possibly that when I’ve finally finished something, it will succeed only in eliciting an unequivocal “meh…” but until I have a solution of some kind, good or bad, I can’t let it go.

But the purpose of this blog was to chronicle my work, and I should be doing that. So I promise to post soon about what I’ve been doing, and you can judge for yourself. If nothing else, my struggles may illuminate someone else’s. Possibly give some ideas, who knows. I hope so.

“Ultimate” as in “the last one” ….. probably.

While putting work up for sale on eBay has been a good way to make  it available to anyone who would like to obtain a “Joel Cooper Original”, and the lucky bidders who have done so seem to be happy with their acquisitions – I still prefer venues where the pieces can be seen, held, touched and thoroughly examined by as many people as possible. Art fairs, conventions, maybe even a gallery or two (although most galleries frown on patrons touching the artwork, which is really not fair at all)

   That said, I’ve put one last mask on eBay for anyone who just has to have one-

See a gigantic image of it here - and a link to the eBay sale here

 I think it’s pretty special – it was originally folded in Brazil for the first International Origami Tessellation Exhibition there, itself a rather special event (in many ways). At about 37 cm. tall it’s the largest mask I’ve ever done or will likely ever do (I had to wrestle a 100 cm. piece of Wyndstone Marble to fold this thing – not fun). You can see, it has acquired a coat of shellac like the mask in Israel from an earlier post, which gives it some nice character, as well as strengthening and protecting the paper.