Lessons from Masters
This was the image that stopped me dead in my tracks, about two years ago. It is a stone Buddha, from the 3rd century, made in North India: artist unknown. I don’t remember anywhere having seen such repose, or balance, in a sculpture or a living face; this degree of simultaneous worldliness and withdrawal-from-the-world . (To meet it, be its equal: not to resign from it!). Actually I know nothing of Buddhism, and intend not to learn. But this one head—well it ranks in my book as one of the world’s great sculptures, of which there are very, very few. Since, at the time, I was beginning to explore methods of making faces in paper, needless to say I tried to copy this head. And needless to say I failed. But the effort did spawn a series of ‘Buddha-like’ origami heads, in which something ancient and Eastern came out, maybe by way of minimalism, simplicity, modesty and humor; and maybe by using properties of paper not available to those who work in stone (a warmth, vulnerability, fragility...