Origami Tessellations

Cafezinho at Maria’s

Originally uploaded by EricGjerde.

Late night folding in Brasil- powered by Maria’s delicious cafezinho!

Muito bom!

We arrived in Brasilia on Wednesday afternoon after 24 hours of travelling, and met our friend Jane at the airport. After a long night of sleep, we went the next day to the national university and checked out Jane’s father’s chemistry lab- my wife Bekah was in heaven (as a chemical engineering major). Later, we went to Jane’s friend Maria’s outside of Brasilia and spent a wonderful day in the outdoors and in their beautiful house. We had a great lunch and dinner there too, and the rest of the tessellation expo group will be enjoying a barbecue there and swimming! There are orchids, palm trees, wild monkeys, parrots, and all sorts of things. Maria is a very gifted artist and has magnificent mandala artwork everywhere.

Late last night we picked up our lost luggage from the airport (hooray for clothes) and this morning we visited the Jardim Botanico, where the tessellation expo will be taking place July 29th to August 6th. We picked up copies of the magazine (from the Jardim) and saw the final layout for the posters. We also met the wonderful lady who is helping us to make this a reality. They were all very, very nice people, and we really felt a great loss by not being able to speak Portuguese with all these new friends.

Our friend Joel will be flying down here tomorrow, and should arrive on Sunday. Not long afterwards our friend Christiane will also be flying, and the group will be complete!

The exhibition space is quite beautiful, and it should really be a great event. We will make sure that there are tons of pictures! I’ll be updating with many photos once I get them transferred from the camera later on this weekend.

To all our friends- we’re having a great time, and the coffee is wonderful (and strong!)

-Eric

I’m pleased to announce an international exhibition on origami tessellations, July 29th through August 6th at the Jardim Botânico in Brasília, Brazil.

This is one of the first origami events focusing entirely on origami tessellations, and should prove to be an exciting time for all of those who enjoy this particular folding niche.

Featured artists include:

Jane Araújo (Brazil)
www.flickr.com/photos/mawelucky/

Christiane Bettens (Switzerland)
www.flickr.com/photos/melisande-origami/

Joel Cooper (USA)
www.flickr.com/photos/origamijoel

Eric Gjerde (USA)
www.flickr.com/photos/origomi/

As well as several other tessellation artists submitting work, including Andy Wilson (http://www.flickr.com/photos/53592906@N00/) and Lorenzo Marchi (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorenzomarchi/).

The art exhibition at the Jardim Botânico is open from 9 AM to 5 PM; the facility is closed on Mondays. Concurrent to that, there will be a week of private meetings and folding get-togethers, so if you’re in the area please get in touch with me and I can give you more information on the schedule.

Our intention is to release a booklet at the end of the exhibition; additional information on that will be posted on the O-list when it is available.

Sources for further information include the origami tessellations group on Flickr, at www.flickr.com/groups/origamitessellations; and my website, at www.origamitessellations.com.

-Eric Gjerde

———————

Estaremos realizando entre os dias 29/07 e 06/08 a primeira exposição internacional de tessellations no Jardim Botânico de Brasília.
Estarão presentes os seguintes artistas:
Christiane Bettens
www.flickr.com/photos/melisande-origami/

Eric Gjerde
www.flickr.com/photos/origomi/

Jane Araújo
www.flickr.com/photos/mawelucky/

Joel Cooper
www.flickr.com/photos/origamijoel

além de trabalhos de outros origamistas ao redor do mundo.

A exposição estará aberta ao público das 9:00 às 17:00 horas, diariamente.

-Jane Araújo

001_rombus_tess_01

Originally uploaded by origami-online.

I was extremely excited to see that Ralf Konrad had joined Flickr today!

He’s just got a few photos online right now, but I’m looking forward to seeing more- hopefully we can convince him to join in on all the conversations in the Origami Tessellations photo group.

Every time we get a new member, the global “brain trust” of the group grows exponentially- all the ideas bouncing off each other seem to multiply more so every time a new river of thought joins the main stream!

Welcome, Ralf! I’m very excited to see you in our group- I’ve admired your work for quite some time now, and I’m looking forward to a great exchange of ideas and thoughts in the months to come!

I just found the beautiful art of John Powers this afternoon. Geometric loveliness in 2D and 3D forms! something for everyone, and absolutely gorgeous.

Red Onion

Other favorites:

Roe 1, #2

Roe Diff: Detail #2

It’s all good, and definitely worth taking a look at. Beautiful.

We have a new discussion thread on the origami tessellation photo group, on Flickr- with photos and links to the various tutorials different members have created and posted. It’s a good place to group some of this stuff together, so if you’ve created a step-by-step tutorial or something similar and you’ve got a flickr account, please post a link to it in the thread!

If you’re curious about tessellations, some of these tutorials might be helpful to you figure out how people make some of their designs!

I had the great pleasure of meeting Christine Edison at the OUSA convention in NYC a few weeks ago, and she has been quite busy since then folding wonderful tessellations- take a look at her new Flickr photostream, and check out all the tessellation goodness!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/christine42/

Welcome, Christine!

I’m very happy to see more tessellation folders on Flickr; we have a wonderful community there, and it’s full of positive reinforcement, idea sharing, and all sorts of great people. If you like tessellations, why don’t you consider joining? It’s free, and it’s a lot of fun!

Oschene provides wonderful instructions, in his slick Sequenced Crease Pattern style, on how to make yourself a regular pentagon or decagon from a square sheet of paper.

If you’ve ever tried to fold pentagons or decagons, you might know that they are irritatingly difficult to work with, inspiring all sorts of bad language to come forth after the 5th or 6th attempt to fold them properly. So I’m very happy to see an easy to follow set of instructions on how to save myself a whole lot of pain.

Thanks, Phillip!

You can get the diagram instructions from his website. (As he pushes the limits of sane blog header lengths in the process. What a URL!)

Octagon Tessellation

Originally uploaded by cati1ine.

Andy Wilson folded this marvelous octagonal tessellation pattern out of glassine. It’s based directly on a design from Chris Palmer’s website, Shadowfolds. (not there anymore, though.)

I’m really happy to see more designs like this- as I continue to try to better understand higher geometries and how they all come together, seeing wonderful examples like this helps for me to comprehend things in a better way. Sometimes having a great visual clue does more than any book full of text can do.

He’s also right about working with glassine- it really, really helps to see the underlying structures in the designs. I highly recommend trying it, especially if you’re not just doing straight grid-based tessellation designs.

Thanks, Andy, for sharing this great work with us!

-Eric

(P.S. - two weeks from today, we’re leaving for Brazil! at the end of the month is the Tessellation Expo at the Botanical Gardens in Brasilia; if by some odd chance you’re in the area, stop by! or check this website again for a heavy preponderance of photographs, afterwards!)