New Work

I bought some new types of paper from Brian Webb at the Centerfold convention in Columbus about a month ago, and this is the first one I’ve gotten to try. This model is folded from Bear Hide paper, but the color reminded me of stained wood (hence the name of this piece).

This was an interesting paper to try out, but it’s one I would only use again for simpler and more geometric models than this. The middle segment folded very nicely, but I had more trouble with the more subtle curves. It was a bit hard to wet-fold this paper, especially since my usual method of taping things in place tended to tear the top layer off the paper. But it’s nice to have a different selection of colors and learn how different papers behave.

This piece combines some of the organic designs I have folded with my Intersections series. Each half of the piece is folded from one uncut circle with one white side and one black side. I like the contrast created by the reversal of the two color patterns.

Since the rest of my Intersections pieces are folded from rectangles, the folding style here is a bit different; the circle allows for the extra paper around the outside to create the waves. The centers of the bowl are shifted away from the centers of the circles, so the waves only extend toward the outside of the bowls.

I recently decorated my wall with an origami pattern. I’ve done another wall design before (and a previous iteration of the butterflies that I never posted).

The butterflies are Akira Yoshizawa’s design (instructions here; many other diagrams and video instructions available online). It’s a fairly simple design but very elegant. I folded about 100 butterflies from squares ranging from 2 inches to 6 inches, and the total pattern is about 3 feet x 6 feet.

Here’s a close-up that shows the individual butterflies more clearly:

I’ve been experimenting lately with a variety of geometric folding techniques. This vase combines the twist pattern I recently designed with one of my earliest vase designs. I like seeing how the new segment changes the overall feel of the vase. The central portion repeats the curved shape of the full vase, but with a lot smaller height.

I’ve been interested in combining tessellations with three-dimensional forms for quite a while, but it’s been a challenge. This is the first piece where I’ve incorporated a tessellated design all over the vase form. I changed the vertical spacing of the dots based on the width and how far apart the dots would be horizontally.

The tessellation is my own design, although it’s simple enough that it may be a re-invention of someone else’s design. I was inspired to fold this design shortly after I folded Lydia Diard’s Circles tessellation because I liked the look of the raised circular (or really, dodecagonal) dots. I figured out how to adapt her design from a hexagonal grid to a square grid, which I posted previously (top photo, bottom right piece). From there, I was able to figure out how to combine the tessellation with the curved-crease vase shapes I usually work with.

This design is a first attempt, and I’d like to find other ways of incorporating tessellated and corrugated elements into my designs. The dots here are visible, but they don’t stand out much more than the horizontal and vertical lines. I’m exploring other ways of combining textures and folded patterns to create visual interest on three-dimensional designs.

Recently, I’ve returned to more purely geometric designs, exploring some new ideas.

This vase looks very clean from the outside, but the folds hidden inside are a bit more messy. I figured out what dimensions I needed for the insets and just hid the extra paper inside and used glue to hold everything in place. Since the angled lines on the main faces are at 45 degrees, the triangles wind up being equilateral.

The second vase uses a bit different folding approach. Creating the twist is actually fairly straightforward – I would be surprised if it’s not a re-invention of someone else’s idea. I used the same angle between each box here, but any angle from 0 to 90 degrees would work with very minor changes to the crease pattern. It could also work for shapes with more sides, not just squares. Collapsing the stack of twists is a bit tricky and uses a lot of paper, so I’m not sure I would want to try a stack too much taller than this.

This piece is one I folded a couple of weeks ago using the same approach as my recent luminary. On the outside of the form, I drew a small spiral of a pattern in ink, which gives a hint of what is on the inside. The inside is painted and has two more patterned spirals.

The shape of this form creates interesting patterns of light and shadow when the model is lit. Near the middle of the model, the section just below the crease line that slopes away from the light appears much darker than the section just above – if the middle of the model flared out much more, the outer part would actually be in shadow. Also, the pattern drawn on the outside appears much crisper than the patterns drawn on the inside. Here is a close-up of the patterns:

For the past several years, I have been primarily folding curved-crease pleated designs where the pleats are vertical. In this piece, I changed the orientation of the pleats so I could create a different type of curvature of the piece. By using horizontal pleats that vary in width around the piece, I curved the vertical axis of the piece. This piece was primarily a test of a folding style I haven’t used much, but I’m hoping to explore this style of folding more.

I have designed a couple luminaries before (several years ago), but this time I decided to put the design on the inside. I started with plain white Elephant Hide paper and painted one side a mottled green/blue. Then, I drew the black pattern on the same side of the paper with a marker. Since the painted side is on the inside, the design only appears when the luminary is lit from the inside.

Here are a couple more views of the bottom of the piece to show how this works:

This is my Christmas design for this year, a variation on my ornament designs from the past two years. This year, I decided to record a video of the folding process. The video starts right after I finished scoring the creases (you can see the rulers and scoring tool on the desk). I start by pre-creasing along the scored (straight and curved) lines. I then glue the paper into a tube and collapse the form in stages, starting from the middle. I used a combination of tape and rubber bands to hold the form in shape. At the very end, I take the tape and rubber bands off an ornament I had folded earlier to reveal the final shape.