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Berlin workshops at Berlinische Galerie Jan 05 & Jan 12

Hello all! just a quick note that I’ll be visiting Berlin these next two weeks giving workshops at the Berlinische Galerie – the first workshop is sold out but I believe there are still a few seats for the second one on January 12th. https://www.bauhaus.de/en/kalender/veranstaltungen/5762_2020_01_12_paper_engineering_from_the_bauhaus This is a series of workshops called “Vorkurs üben” organized by the Bauhaus Archiv as part of the “Original Bauhaus” exhibition. I’m looking forward to presenting these workshops on behalf of the Bauhaus Archiv – I’ve done several things for them over the last two years and this is a great closure to the 2019 Centenary year of the Bauhaus for me!

paper artifact from the Bauhaus

Upcoming workshops in Minneapolis and Berlin

Hello all – I have three upcoming workshop dates to announce, for my series “Paper Engineering from the Bauhaus: Josef Albers to the Modern Day“. Paper artist Eric Gjerde leads a course of experimentation and discovery in the spirit of Josef Alber’s preliminary course, using historical paper art exercises and creations from the Bauhaus School as well as modern designs and ideas that build on the original concepts. Students will take techniques and create their own works within various design constraints, in line with Bauhaus methodology. Our intent is to open minds and expand horizons (while also having a lot of fun playing with paper!) In line with the original Bauhaus workshops we will be working with our hands and basic tools only in an entirely analog format. Course Languages: English November 14th, 2019: Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, MN, USA January 5th, 2020: Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, DE January 12th, 2020: Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, DE  

Reverse-engineering Bauhaus paper designs (part two)

My Bauhaus reverse-engineering work has been continuing this chilly springtime, and I wanted to share a few new pieces. (New to me, anyway, but definitely not new in any sense of the word!) There’s three different items here. One is a cone-shaped structure – part of a large, extensive family of expanding cuts (See some interesting usage of this concept by Haresh Lalvani). I’ve just started digging into this – and each tiny tweak I make changes the results dramatically. Differences in cut length, spacing, width of rings, how many of them there are, the tensile strength of the paper… there’s a lot of factors to contend with! But I keep finding interesting new behaviors so this is certainly worth more exploration. Another model is an elegant twisting spiral – a tiny version of a larger recreation of this original piece: I’ve been entranced with this design since I first saw it 3 years ago, and I’m very glad to have finally figured out how to recreate it! There is currently a large version of …

Eric Gjerde, Bauhaus paper engineering

Paper Engineering from the Bauhaus: Josef Albers to the Modern Day

I am teaching a week-long intensive paper engineering course this summer (July 23-28) at the International Summer School, taking place in the UNESCO World Heritage site Bauhaus Denkmal Bundesschule Bernau (DE). This is my second year at the Summer School, and my first time teaching a standalone paper course there. I’m super excited to be returning and I’ll have suitcases full of crazy paper art to share with my students. You should come be a part of it! My course, titled “Paper Engineering from the Bauhaus: Josef Albers to the Modern Day“, will draw upon my research into the preliminary course of Josef Albers as well as my own practice as a paper artist. Students will spend 5 days exploring a number of different forms of paper engineering, culminating with a presentation to the school of their collective works. Here’s the course descriptive text, with more info: One of the mainstays of the Bauhaus preliminary course for first-year students was working with paper – to make something more with it that still spoke to the …

Bauhaus Foundation Course instructional booklet

  Here’s a PDF of my Bauhaus Foundation course handout from 2017; it’s been sitting here on my computer for months now and it seems high time to share it. This is all based on my research into the preliminary course / foundation course work of Josef Albers, and the folding exercises he taught his students at both the Bauhaus and the Black Mountain College in Asheville, NC. It’s a few simple models, including the Hypar (as shown above), a herringbone corrugation pattern, a basic Floderer-esque crumpling piece, and a pleated wave (from Goran Konjevod). We touched on more work during our course but these needed the most instruction, so they were diagrammed. All that being said, I vastly prefer to walk students through folding, crumpling, and cutting things by hand without instructional sheets – I don’t want them to just follow a handout and duplicate what they see. I want them to experience the process and think about it so they may find new ways of doing it in their own style. They are …