Year: 2008

My book is shipping in mid-December! Pre-order now!

My book, Origami Tessellations: Awe-Inspiring Geometric Designs, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. My publisher has indicated that it will start shipping sometime around mid-December, although no dates have been set in stone yet. I had a chance to see the proofs of the book two weeks ago at my editor’s office – it really is a gorgeous book! And I’ll be receiving my advance copies within a few weeks, in time to bring them with me to the Italian origami convention in Verbania, IT this December for my book’s first official showing to the public. I know many of you pre-ordered this book when it was with my previous publisher, Lark Books, and after that deal fell through I’ve had many people asking me “when will your book be available?” Well, the answer is now very very soon – within two months from now! It’s been a long time in the waiting, but I feel that this book is well worth the wait 🙂 Having the chance to change things around with the …

Buckminster Fuller Quote – Poster Offensive 4

Buckminster Fuller Quote by Peet Fetsch, originally uploaded by Poster Offensive. I was contacted by a local designer, Peet Fetsch, about using some of my work in a poster design for the fourth annual Poster Offensive exhibition. As he was planning on using a quote from Buckminster Fuller, one of my personal heroes, I was quite interested. I’m so pleased with how this turned out. I had a great time seeing it in the gallery – it’s always a blast to see something of yours on display, even if it is just background imagery for a Bucky quote! It’s also intriguing to me how other people find the crease lines in this work to be the real focal point… I’m always fixated on the folding process, but with this piece in particular the unfolded crease lines add something to the piece as a whole, and for many people it’s what they focus on. Most people seem to think it is pen or pencil, which makes me chuckle a little bit. When I explain it’s all …

Jeff Rutzky at NYC Resistor!

My friend Jeff Rutzky stopped by the NYC Resistor workshop to share his detailed knowledge about all things CraftROBO. (For those of you not in the know – it’s a computer controlled cutting device made by Graphtec, and while it is sold for things like scrapbooking use the enterprising designer/artist/geek uses it for all sorts of fantastic uses. I’m a proud owner of one, and it’s been a lot of fun!) Jeff specifically showed them some of his special techniques for making complex folding models out of polypropylene: (this is one of his best secrets – when he explained this method to me I was just amazed. We made all sorts of cool stuff by using this technique!) Jeff went to the event after talking with Bre Pettis, all-around-Maker-extraordinaire; here’s a shot of the setup from his flickr photostream: And a shot of all the kids watching the fun, compliments of littlegreenfroggy: I’m really pleased to see someone bridging the gap between the often-insular origami community and the geek-community-at-large – there’s tons of fantastic stuff …

links for 2008-07-15

radical cartography Fascinating GIS mapping of housing in Manhattan and valuation of properties… you can really tell where the social structures lie, when looking at this map. Intriguing. (tags: map NYC art interesting structure information)

Andrea Russo: Stars in a sky of hexagons

Stars in a sky of hexagons, originally uploaded by AndreaRusso. My friend Andrea Russo folded this wonderful piece, titled “Stars in a sky of hexagons”, and posted it for me as a birthday gift. It makes great use of negative space – I love the negative space stars, which so nicely solve the problem of making an uncluttered star shape out of a single sheet of paper. Thanks for sharing this with me, Andrea!