Eric Gjerde Origami

I’m writing today to ask for your advice.

Over the last five years, I have come quite far – rediscovering and developing an art form which is fairly unique, meeting many like-minded and gifted artists, and making friends all over the world through our shared love of paper arts. This has been a wonderful journey and I have loved every minute of it.

However, I’m at a bit of a crossroads right now. I have so many areas I want to explore; working with metals, wood, fabrics, leather, and plastics, using CNC routers and lasers and plasma cutters and 3D rapid prototyping… but I don’t have the time, resources, or knowledge to do these things. This has led me to the decision that I really need to find a school or university where I can learn all about these technologies and techniques, and put them to good use making my own artistic visions become reality.

… And I’ve hit a stumbling block. Most of the schools I am looking at offer either focused Paper and Bookmaking Arts programs (like Columbia College in Chicago) or more general Fine Arts programs (Pratt, SVA, etc.) which often require students to have the ability to draw/sketch/paint. This is not a gift I happen to have I also have little desire in designing book art; I truly adore good book art but it’s just really not something I see myself doing, and I hesitate to look into a program that would want me to spend a lot of time working with books rather than the paper itself.

Here’s where I need your help, fair readers. Do any of you have suggestions or ideas as to schools or universities I should look into? Is there a better focus to look at, like design vs. art, that would allow me to better use the talents I have? I’m very interested in branching out to new art forms and materials but I do have a rather focused interest, which makes this all a bit complicated. I want to find a school that focuses my geometry and pattern skills to their best possible level.

I’ve seen so many interesting things that people do – design, architecture, sculpture, paper arts, graphic design, printmaking, and so on… I’d love to pursue these things further and see where my potential can take me.

If you have any ideas, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line at ericgjerde@mac.com. I’d be happy to have a phone conversation with you, just send an email and I’ll respond with my contact info.

Thanks so much to all of you! I greatly appreciate your help.

-Eric Gjerde

(And a quick note – I’m currently working on some new projects out of leather, I hope to have finished pieces in a few weeks to share with you! I’m very excited with how this is turning out!)

Hanatsubaki, Nov 2008, No. 701, originally uploaded by EricGjerde.

Shiseido’s in-house fashion magazine, Hanatsubaki (Camelia Flower). Shiseido is a high-end Japanese cosmetics company, and Hanatsubaki has been in continuous print since 1937 with a subscriber base of over 9 million. (thanks Wikipedia!)

I am part of a small story on origami and design process, or something to that effect – along with some material from Robert J. Lang and Yuko Nishimura, both artists whom I respect very much.

I would be very interested to know what this article says, so if someone out there is willing to translate this for me I would greatly appreciate it!

It’s a bit out of place, in some respects, with much of the content in the remainder of the magazine… it’s primarily about fashion and design, a lifestyle culture product. It’s quite interesting, but I must admit it was a bit of a surprise for one of their writers to ask me to participate and do an interview. I had a good time, though, and it was helpful for me to think about my design process and actually write out some thoughts on how I go about doing this. The answers surprised me a little bit! When you’re creating things, you don’t consciously think about the creation process – you’re just creating, and in the moment, so almost all other thought is pushed back while you’re focused on the task at hand. To reflect on it after the fact isn’t something I normally do, so it was quite a good exercise for me to undertake.

Thanks to the kind folks at Shiseido and especially to writer Yukari Miyamoto for allowing me to contribute to their magazine.

Oceania Box, originally uploaded by cedison.

Our friend Christine Edison posted these fantastic boxes – something she first made about four years ago. The blue one is a new version, slightly modified with additional pleats, and she’s thinking of teaching it this year at the Origami USA convention in NYC.

I have to say that I’m completely in love with this blue box. The curving shape, the textures of both the elephant hide paper and the spiking, ridged pleats – it’s a beautiful piece of art. I want to see it folded on a grand scale out of some kind of marvelous leather, all shiny and smooth.

It reminds me of a leather pillow that I saw on Pietro Seminelli’s website – www.seminelli.fr – but it looks like he has done a site update and I can’t find an image of it anymore, sadly.

I believe there is a photo of it (or a similar pattern) in Jean-Charles Trebbi’s book, L’art du pli. It features a wide array of pleating and folding eye-candy – a must-have book. More on this when my copy arrives here in the States!

Christine has been on a real folding kick lately – check out her blog, at cedison.wordpress.com for updates. She’s also posted a partial set of instructions for the Oceania Box:

Keep up the good work Christine, your fan club is loving it!

The Origami Tessellations group on Flickr created a contest for the month of October, asking people to create octagonally-themed works to celebrate our lonely eight-sided friend and all of his creative possibilities.

My deepest apologies to all of your for the delay in choosing and awarding the winners of this contest – sometimes life has a way of becoming very busy and suddenly two months have passed in the blink of an eye. As penance for being two months late in my judging, I’ve added some additional prizes to this contest: Three contestants will receive a one year Flickr pro membership!

I’d like to thank everyone for participating and contributing such beautiful artwork – so many varieties and methods of folding, I was really astounded to see the diversity of ideas at play in all of your creations! I think everyone who has created something here and shared it with the world is a winner, and you should all be proud of the artwork you have created.

So without further ado, here are the three people who submitted artwork which I thought was the most compelling:

Andrew Hudson (origami_madness) – Andrew absolutely blew me away by creating a new octagonal art piece for each single day in October! I never imagined in my wildest dreams that someone would take this contest to such a level of creative energy. Along with the Flickr Pro account I will also be mailing Andrew a special copy of my origami tessellations book, along with a selection of papers from my own studio paper collection. I’m completely amazed by what he has done! There are so many favorites here, and some truly astonishing new ideas he has shared… but here’s my favorite three:

Endre Somos (soma0213) – Endre made a delightful floral octagonal pattern which reminded me greatly of illustrations from the Grammar of Ornament, my most beloved book of architectural elements and design. The use of visually complex floral design elements together with empty space linked together structurally reinforces the beauty of this artwork. I’m quite fond of this pattern!

Carlos Natan López Nazario (Origami Natan) – Natan creates these phenomenal 3D tessellation structures, which have long fascinated me; but he really captured my interest with his “8 Cubes Star” model, which is a three-dimensional version of my absolute favorite octagonal star pattern. He also has a larger model of a previous version, his “8 Points Star” design, which is similarly delightful.

There was additional work by friends and group members which I also thought was quite deserving of award:

Almost Orange Octagons, by Yureiko

Octagons and Squares Twists, by Andrea Russo

Octagonal Spirals, by Ben Parker

October Blooms, by Ilan Garibi

Dana Hall Display, by Alexander Soukas

Khatam, by Mélisande

If you are interested in looking through all of the submissions to the contest, you can see them via the following link:

http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?w=90644975%40N00&q=Octagons+for+October&m=pool

There were so many beautiful pieces submitted, I loved them all – thank you everyone for participating and sharing your art!

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 help of a talented editor/book designer really allowed us to make it a better book, and I think you will be pleased with the result. I know that I am!

Origami Tessellations: Awe-Inspiring Geometric Designs

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 just folded lines, they don’t always believe me.

The original work of mine can be seen here:

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 to be done, and the more people involved the merrier. We need more talented technically-adept geeks to be involved with origami, because that’s how innovation happens!

(ps: 8/8/8! hope you all did something lucky today!)

-Eric

• radical cartography
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  (tags: map NYC art interesting structure information)

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!

• Toby Curnow’s FFFFOUND! images
  Toby Curnow has wonderful taste in found images – delightful sources of inspiration here. Much time wasted following link after link after link… well, not wasted – but instead feeding new ideas! Try it yourself.
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