Origami For Kids

The awful thing about this origami business is that it keeps changing. You can never rest on your laurels. At any given moment, somebody, somewhere is doing something mind-boggling, or worse, is busy outpacing you at the very thing you once most prided yourself in. I shudder to think what will happen if Ronald Koh ever comes out with a book—having seen a few of his Fish, the best in the world, and knowing something of the design problems involved: won’t a book will make it clear he’s one of the foremost animal designers of our time? But there is no need for dreadful anticipations. As we speak, out there on the edge of the universe, in Calgary, Canada, Roman Diaz is plugging away at his Birds: carrying the study of avian origami to what I think everyone will recognize as new heights. His bird from the post before last (Nov 1 2006) is not so much a homage to Michael LaFosse’s Cardinal as a rival to it, in elegance of straight-line form and color (if not in simplicity of design), someth...

Thanks for the terrific time you showed me the other week at the well-organized origami convention, and before that at the impressive mask exhibit and the LAO meeting. It is heartening to see how origami is flourishing and specially exciting to meet the design talent now emerging in your country. I will remember your cities of Medellin and Cali---where the women have the most amazing figures; where (in Cali) at night in the rain, open-air busses go around with music blaring and people dancing on them, because those Columbians they can’t stop partying for a minute; and where (in Medellin) origami is taught at the University as a required subject … Cheers Saadya