New Work

First, thanks to Ann of All Things Paper for featuring my work on her website! Ann has a lovely site on a wide range of paper artwork and crafts, with lots of exciting projects and ideas.

This piece is a continuation of the diagonal shift series I have been folding over the past several months. Here I used two modified diagonal shifts with a narrow central section separating the top and bottom halves. The separation between the two large sections creates a slight illusion that the top half is floating, like the divided vases I folded recently.

The paint pattern is designed such that the two halves would align if the two halves of the vase were connected directly on top of each other. I like the combination of the two metallic colors, similar to what I used in a recent piece.

Even though I do all the design work before doing anything with the paper, it’s always exciting to see how the folded model comes out looking slightly differently than I expected based on a 2D sketch. The color pattern here came out a bit more tribal-looking than I would have thought, especially before I folded the paper. Often the things I didn’t expect are what inspire new ideas and push my designs in new directions.

This piece is a continuation of my diagonal shift series, combining the diagonal shift variant where the width of the piece changes with a form I folded recently. Unlike my earlier piece where the central section of the vase was essentially shifted to one side, here the central section is mostly cut away and only a small supporting cylinder remains. In that way, this piece has some commonalities with my most recent divided vases. I also chose to use two different colors of paint here in addition to the black of the paper, which I haven’t used much since my painted vases more than a year ago.

As usual, this piece is folded from one uncut rectangle of Elephant Hide paper. I used a bit of glue to turn the paper into a cylinder, and the rest of the form is wet-folded.

Continuing in the same style as my last piece, this piece explores dividing a simple vase form horizontally into several segments. Unlike my previous attempt, here the gaps are small enough that it’s much easier to visually fill in the gaps. I also like the color of this piece, which is a mixture of green and gold acrylic paint. Most of my work over the past year or so has been various neutral colors, and I’m happy to be using color again.

As I mentioned last time, one challenge with this type of design is that the lengths of the horizontal paper segments have to be very precise. On the lower division, I overestimated the length of the paper (by probably 1-2 mm), so the vase doesn’t hold its shape quite as well as most of my work. I can wet-fold it and tape it into place, but within a few hours after I remove the tape, the top 2/3 of the vase tilts a bit. If I decide to fold more pieces in this style, I’ll have to be even more careful about lengths and account for the stretching of the paper when I wet-fold it.

This model is an extension of my recent Diagonal Shift and Intersections series where I have used flat planes to intersect the curved vase forms in various ways. Here I have used two planes to split the vase form and (nearly) remove the central section. The curved shapes of the top and bottom sections visually connect to fill in the missing central section. This vase has a large gap between the two remaining sections, perhaps a bit too large to make the visual connection easy to make. I’m hoping to explore this idea further in more models.

Another new aspect of this piece that isn’t obvious in this photo is that I mixed a little color into the metallic paint. This piece has silver paint with hints of blue and purple mixed into it.

This piece was a bit easier to fold than many of my recent pieces, although the central section of the vase was still not trivial to collapse. Getting the correct length of the paper segments creating the flat planes between the sections is critical: a small excess length will cause a significant slant to what should be a flat horizontal plane. With practice over the past several years, I’ve learned how to adjust the calculated length to get flat horizontal planes. Typically, the paper needs to be a millimeter or two shorter than the math would suggest.

This test model is a return to a concept I first explored almost two years ago in my triangular bottle form. At that time, this style of folding was very challenging for me, and I did not explore these ideas further at that time. I recently revisited this concept. With quite a bit more folding experience, I was able to find an easier way of approaching this idea.  I have a variety of ideas for models that use this style of folding, and this test model may become the beginning of a new series.

This model is my design for the Christmas presents I’m giving this year, similar to my ornament from last year. I went through several drafts of this design before settling on this final shape. The original inspiration for this shape came from the floor tiles in the bathroom of a hotel I stayed at in France.

I started with gold Elephant Hide paper and painted it with several thin coats of paint. I first used a flat coat of a muted green, followed by a second darker coat of the same color with the brushstrokes left visible. The final coat was a thin layer of gold and silver to add shine.

This vase is a continuation of my diagonal shift series, incorporating the modified diagonal shift I designed and test-folded recently. Unlike my earlier double diagonal shifts, this piece incorporates one diagonal ‘cut’ and a second horizontal ‘cut’ above it.  The two pieces are connected by a short narrow cylinder, which is visible in the close-up below.

I like this concept, but it still has the potential to be used much more dramatically. I’m planning to re-visit this concept again in another piece.

Over the past several months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort developing vases with a diagonal shift element, based on the crease patterns here. This model is another variation on the same theme. I’ve taken the color pattern from my first double diagonal shift vase and applied it to a smaller, simpler vase form.

As always, this piece is folded from one uncut rectangle of Elephant Hide paper. The gold sections were painted with acrylic paint before the model is folded. I measured out a sine curve using a ruler and used masking tape to get a clean straight edge.

For the past couple months I have been exploring various designs using a diagonal shift element, working up from simple test models and crease patterns to more complex designs. Now I’m exploring a new variation of the same theme.

In this test model, I am using the same basic diagonal shift element but also changing the width of the tube above and below the shift. This gives the design a bit more flexibility in how I can use it. The change in width only adds a little complexity to the crease pattern, but it makes the model a bit more challenging to collapse.

This model is a continuation of my diagonal shift series. In this piece, I pushed the off-balance look I started exploring earlier in the series to its limit. As before, I put small rocks in the bottom of the model to keep it balanced. Since the paper is so light, the little bit of extra weight allows me to create shapes that would be nearly impossible in other sculptural media. Just like I’ve been doing throughout this series, I enjoy combining simple, elegant forms with unexpected elements.

The double diagonal shift is challenging to collapse. This version where the two shifts are going in the same direction is more challenging than my last version where the shifts went in opposite directions.

For this design, I incorporated a gradient of metallic paint, from silver at the top to copper at the bottom, and left the black paper exposed on the planes of the diagonal shift. As always, I painted the paper before folding it.