New Work

I recently posted a few test folds of pleated tubes. In this model, I’ve used those pleats in a more finished vase-like form. The curve here reminds me of a question mark, or of a swan’s neck.

The triangular shape means that each pleat requires a lot fewer folds and reference points than my previous curved-neck vases with 10 sides. I’m still exploring whether this is a direction I’m interested in turning into a series.

I’ve played before with some mixed media designs, combining origami with ceramics. This piece is a first attempt at combining origami with knitting.

The wavy form is similar to a shape I’ve used in a few previous designs, especially my wavy split bowl. This form is folded from a rectangle, with pleats that release near the top of the form to create the waves.

The knit piece is mostly a simple seed stitch with increases to create the waves, plus a bit of ribbing to create the fold points on the corners. Similar to my ceramics pieces, I made the knit piece first because the dimensions are a bit more challenging to control as precisely. The number of stitches I added in each wave was planned to match the proportions of each pleat in the origami form, which is why the shapes came out so similar.

One of the new challenges of this piece was figuring out how to stiffen the knit form with something that soaked into the yarn and didn’t show on the surface. It turns out that a couple coats of methylcellulose (well know to many origamists for making paper crisp and wet-foldable) works fairly well, along with some wire to hold the shape in place while it dries.

A few more views of the two pieces together:

This piece is a continuation of my series of curved-neck vases. The neck is a series of crimp bends to create the curve. This is from a couple years ago and spent most of a year at the Science Museum Oklahoma, but I didn’t get it posted then.

I like the look of these forms and how much more organic they are than many of my more purely geometric designs. Unfortunately, the series of crimp-folds along the neck is such a pain to fold that I’m not in a hurry to add any more to the series.

Continuing from my recent textural study vases, another pair of vases. The first has three inset bands tilted at different angles along different axes. As always, I painted the paper before folding it, so the locations of the bands had to be planned in advance.

The second is a larger deviation from the base vase shape, with several distinct steps between vertical columns.

Here are the three painted vases in the series together, showing the common basic shape with differences in texture and pattern.

After a long absence, a few relatively simple vases exploring texture in folds and paint. I chose to use the same basic shape for these two vases so I could play with these effects.

The first vase is folded from unpainted Elephant Hide paper. The neck has 15 pleats, which is just far enough from my normal 16 pleats to make the dimensions a bit annoying to work with. The 15 pleats allow me to make the base a regular pentagon, and the large unfolded panels curve enough to transition smoothly from 15 sides to five.

The second vase is painted with a brushed texture similar to things I’ve used quite a few times before. Each of the 16 sides has a raised flange with several waves. The construction is very similar to a large vase I folded several years ago (see crease pattern), except for the added waves.

This vase is part of my series of geometrically distorted vases, incorporating a tilt of the main axis of the vase. This vase is similar to one of my recent models, and since that model I’ve figured out how to adapt the curved portions of the vase to keep the horizontal planes all closer to exactly horizontal. The shift in the middle uses the same pattern as my downhill diagonal shifts, with the angle chosen to match the tilt of the vase.

This model is the second in my series of curved-neck vases. These models use the same geometric crimp-bends that I’ve been using my geometrically distorted vases, but the series of bends creates the illusion of a curve. The series of bends is a lot of work to fold, but I like how this model has a different feel from the more strictly geometric pieces I’ve done for a long time.

This model builds on my recent offset bowl, where the model is based on a tilted cylinder. Here, I added curved folds and painted lines to the tilted cylinder, fitting it into my geometrically distorted vase series. The central bend is similar to my previous designs, and the top and bottom planes are also defined by sine waves to transition between the tilted cylinder and flat planes.

Inspired by my diagonal shift pieces, this model is a test piece incorporating several diagonal planes. The base, central plane, and top edge are all defined by sine waves. Unlike my previous models, these sine waves create three planes parallel to the table but tilt the central axis of the bowl. This is fairly straightforward to do with all straight folds, and I’m exploring whether this concept can be used with curved folds in my more complex diagonal shift designs.

As usual, I designed an ornament this year, similar to my designs the past several years. The paper is hand-painted with several layers of watered-down acrylic paint, which gives a texture a lot like watercolors. It doesn’t show much in the photo, but there’s a thin layer of silver paint on top that gives it a hint of sparkle.