Origami Tessellations

Today, I came across the most amazing paper artist on flickr- Yoshi, from Venezuela. Very much into the pleating and corrugating way of things, he has some marvelous pieces of work on display; please go and visit, and admire some of this work.

He has this to say:

I’m a self-taught guy who often works folding, drawing or cutting paper, which is my favorite and, almost, exclusive media. I’m practicing this since I was six years old (now I’m 29), first as a hobby, after my obsession with games where you win real money and, three years ago, as my way for living. Some of my sorts of inspiration are the geometrical patterns used for sacred decoration in India and the Islam world. In my work (paper folding, kiri-e and drawing) I have three fields of investigation: arts (mural decorations & photos), industrial design (lamps and other utilitary objects) and fashion (dresses and accessories), where arts are the most important, an the other two provide me with practice and some knowledge.

South America truly has some of the best and brightest of the paper artists in the world. Every time I find another gifted creator it convinces me further that I need to plan a visit to Colombia and Venezuela (and don’t forget all the tessellators in Chile!)

My apologies for the huge photo post here, but I wanted to share so many of these images with you. This is only a taste!

I’m particularly interested in learning about his molding and casting processes… I hope to learn more soon.

-Eric Gjerde

(Ray and Polly, this post is for you!)

There are also some additional images done by my flickr contact Liu Prato:

We just got back from NYC a few days ago; my wife Bekah just finished uploading the majority of our photos, if you’re inclined to take a look.

It was a lot of fun, and we were able to meet up with many flickr folding friends, both old and new. I’m very thankful for such a great chance to meet so many of you in person!

Some highlights that I enjoyed:

(title shot) – Bekah’s kirigami artwork of the Sun and Water, assembled (or deconstructed?) in Jeff’s Harlem studio.

32 two-dollar bills, folded as a single sheet, by me:

Some great work from Christine Edison:

Brian Chan:

Fantastic tessellated Romanesco cauliflower, again by Brian Chan:

Pureland Tessellations by Goran Konjevod:

Ray Schamp’s Corrugations:

More beautiful tessellations and masks from Joel Cooper:

Astonishing pieces from Polly Verity, our new folding friend from Scotland:

And, of course, some photos from our visit to Jen Stark’s exhibition at the LMak Projects over in Williamsburg:

(this last piece is my favorite!)

Bekah and I are heading to NYC tomorrow morning, to do a little touristing and personal meet-ups before the Origami USA convention June 22-25 at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.

I will be teaching two classes, one complex class on folding tessellations from this scallop shell unit, and one intermediate class on "tessellation basics". To that end, I whipped together a little booklet covering a few of the basic concepts, using some materials and ideas from my upcoming book. It’s really just a bit of a taste of the topic, but I wanted to help people grasp some of the simple bits, so the class would be a bit easier to teach- teaching is hard work, and I get easily sidetracked.

I will be posting a version of the 8 page booklet online after the convention, once I have an opportunity to shake out anything that the class (or others) feel is a little confusing, needs clarification, etc.

Jamie Kelley of Vancouver helped out enormously by taking my random snippets of text and imagery and wrangling them into a nice collection of pages. Thanks so much, Jamie! I’m very impressed with the final product.

For those of you going to the convention, who might be in NYC ahead of time- if you’d like to meet up for coffee or dinner please shoot me an email at origomi@mac.com, and we’ll see what we can arrange. I’m hoping to spend some quality time talking with other like-minded folders without the crush of the convention atmosphere, so if you’re interested in having a chat let me know.

Oddly enough, I always seem to travel on my birthday- tomorrow I turn 29 years old. The last year seems to have just whizzed past at a rapid pace. What new exciting things will the next year hold? I can’t wait to find out.

UPDATE: You can now download the PDF!

My wife Bekah folded this wonderful model of Tom Hull’s the other afternoon, to display at the OUSA convention in NYC in a few weeks.

I have always considered this to be one of the really difficult designs out there, and yet she did it in just a few hours. I’m glad she doesn’t fold tessellations or I’d be out of a job! 🙂