New work: Double diagonal shift vase

This piece builds on my recent test models and copper vase using a diagonal shift element. This is my first model incorporating more than one diagonal shift into the same model. It’s certainly more challenging to collapse the model – I almost had to wrestle the paper into shape. It’s also particularly difficult to do any sort of shaping to the middle tier since there’s no way to reach inside of it to manipulate the paper.

As always, I painted the paper before folding it. Since the folds created strong diagonals, I used the paint to incorporate additional diagonal design elements.

As was pointed out to me on Flickr several months ago, these sorts of designs have a bit of a surrealist twist. I had the original idea for this series shortly after visiting the Magritte Museum in Brussels, which probably influenced me subconsciously. My origami has always had a contrast between simple, elegant forms and an engineering aspect of analyzing how the shape is constructed from one uncut rectangle of paper. This series takes that analysis aspect and makes it more explicitly part of the shape  itself.