Origami For Kids

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...

Origami, like anything with a long history, also has a destiny; by which I mean for instance that folds that were thought to be extremely difficult 100 years ago are child’s play today, and forms that 60 or 70 years ago were thought to be impossible without making cuts—so that a cut here & there was overlooked—are known as perfectly possible today with a little extra effort. Cuts accordingly are more strictly shunned even by non-puritans. The preference for the square has grown firmer, though it’s by no means absolute; and the field has grown enough to allow modulars, multi-part assemblages, though this is frowned upon in animal design (unless the units are sufficiently small to make it an extension of modular origami.) In short, the field has naturally pushed toward a set of ideals or strictures, which on approach have sometimes further split into other ideals and strictures each of which defines a new sub-field. Moreover, one can claim that this ‘destiny’ was present if dimly fel...

Paperfolding types being generally nice, as a group we tend to be inclusive and tolerant about what gets counted as origami so long as scissors are not much in evidence. Nevertheless the question of the limits of origami keeps coming up and even nice people can have strong opinions about this. (So it’s good there are no scissors around.) I don’t want to jump straight into this maelstrom but do want to describe a case that I think points to where the edge, or one edge, of this field is. Suppose you wanted to make an origami human hand , from say a square or a rectangle. There are already a few simple and nice solutions to this, so there’s little point to actually inventing a new one. But one conceivable way to do it would be to take an indefinitely long strip of paper, roll it out to the first fingertip, fold, roll it back to the palm, fold, out to the next fingertip, fold, back to the palm, and so on. What you get is effectively the same as what you’d get if you drew a hand with a pen ...

Well. Events will turn your head right around, like the Devil-child in that movie. And when you finally think you are looking at things straight on you will in fact be seeing them exactly backward. In a life it may happen that you find yourself in free-fall, with nothing to hope for except the crash you know is coming sooner or later. And then, out from nowhere, from a white mist, comes this hand that locks on to yours in a fore-arm grip, and hoists you back to the flying trapeze. The things you’ve said or done in an earlier existence, in some long-forgotten past, serve you in good stead. Even having done some origami once upon a time, turns out possibly to count. In the mail the other day there arrived a packet—sent, the handwritten address shows, from a possibly mythical land called “Grenoble”. The sender is decidedly a mythic creature: it is Nicolas Terry , who one recognizes (even without checking behind for the shape of his ears) to be an Elf , with unaccountable powers for work a...

This Blog and my schemes for it have carried me more than once now back to the zoo. I spend so much time with my paper animals, fussing endlessly for instance over a detail of this or that bird, that it’s a shock—pleasant on the whole, if humbling—to see the real beasties. Talk all you like about ‘having the touch’ or ‘breathing life into a sheet of paper’: Life still trumps anything you can make with your own two hands. What a joy animals are. And what a relief, sometimes, from people.

What moods may a Convention unleash. Bad or good I am exhausted by them, need a day for the live currents to work their way through my system. And weeks till the energies have all converted themselves into paperforms. This one, the third convention run in Israel as an enterprise of the Israeli Origami Center, fell in time with the mixed moods of war. As an activity often laced with the guilt of escapism and childish indulgence, origami had its basic existential qualities stretched here to the limit. Most people were----glad, one way, not to have to watch the news for three days; but guilty at it too, at not using this time to help somehow with all that’s going on (if only by keeping in touch and commiserating), or to care for their families. For the handful of Northerners it was a chance to crawl out of the bomb shelters for a time and rub their eyes. Then there were all the young people—they haven’t been called up yet, but you know they will be soon. (I worry especially for GN; for L....

An origami blog had better be a goad to productive work—or else it’s mere reporting, and there are plenty of people who can do a better job at that than me. But sometimes events won’t leave you a clear mind or heart for work; and then words aren’t a bad substitute. Words—the right words—something more than the inarticulate ‘Wow’ that a new piece or display elicits for itself (though the wow is crucial). Words that strike home; words that infuriate; or melt hearts; words that can trigger in oneself or another an active investigation—on a sheet of paper, not leaving it to a lazy eye to drift along these sentences—: Is it like this, or is it like that? I started talking about categories of sculptural origami a few posts ago, but by no means have I done justice to all that’s happening out there in the world—happening now, as I speak, wasting time on this computer that’s probably better spent on a sheet of paper. So far the ideas have been these. There is a way of folding that highlights t...