Origami For Kids

Starting out, I did not intend this to be a self-portrait. But I'm told now that this is not a conclusion I can exactly avoid.... You be the judge. Anyway. So, I figured out how to do eyeballs properly from origami, and now am going crazy putting eyes on everything. Note the magnets --the lozenge-shaped thingies. I use those on the 3D surface in places where clips can't reach, to hold layers together as the misted paper dries. (The paper is pre-treated with methyl cellulose and a light ink rub, so it stiffens up nicely.) --Anybody else do this? Cheers! Saadya

the first chameleon I've ever seen in the wild in Beersheva, I saw this morning climbing the Etrog tree in my garden a healthy young specimen--- naturally I confronted him with an unfair comparison he was utterly speechless

A few heads showing off some of the latest technology. All are folded from uncut rectangles of paper --grays Canson, greens Fabriano--pretreated with methyl cellulose and a light ink wash, then wet-folded. The beard-nose-mouth is a construction mostly worked out six months ago; the eyebrows and "wheat-sheath" motif I came up with in the last few weeks. Enjoy -S

At last! my little book is now seeing the light of day. Equally parts coffee-table art book, and hands-on, get your fingers twitching model and sculpture-making guide, there's a text, and there's a DVD, covering three of the four main branches of origami that I've been exploring in recent years: FACES ANIMALS CURVES I didn't want this to be just an “instructional manual” (= origami diagrams book) but even so instruction, that is, constructing-guiding-demonstrating-suggesting-directing-cajoling-provoking-leadingbyexample (with lots of hand movements) is very much the essence of this book, because it's very much the essence of origami. So there are diagrams & step-by-step guides in both book and DVD, and there is some fancy talk, but the sculpture images are what's really meant to linger in your mind. I give away probably the two most important secrets for how I make my faces. The DVD shows both basic concepts and one complete project for making a head. The ...

I have the honor of announcing, on behalf of the Japan Museum SieboldHuis , that an exhibition of origami art by Akira Yoshizawa will be held in Leiden, the Netherlands, from April 30 to May 29, 2011. Titled “ Animal Parade . Origami by Akira Yoshizawa ”, the focus will be on animals—as they have that special quality of 'liveliness' that the 'Father of Modern Origami' was noted for. There will be over 200 sculptures in various postures and groupings, from periods spanning the Master's career. These "range from gorillas and seahorses to a dinosaur and a horse of exceptional height", as per the exhibition website which is now up. Lectures and hands-on workshops by origami luminaries (as well as by Yours Truly) are scheduled for the weekend of May 7-8 . This will be the largest-scale showing of Akira Yoshizawa's pioneering work in any setting outside of Japan, since the 1950s. The last such museum exhibit at this scale in the West was also the first one:...

Added 14 March, 2012. All of you thousands of sudden visitors to my site, who came here today via the "Google doodle" or by Google-imaging "Akira Yoshizawa"---I am immensely flattered, but am just a humble student of the late great master. If you like this "Head", you might like to know that the sculpture was shown during a talk at the fabulous Yoshizawa animal origami exhibit at the SieboldHuis JapanMuseum in Leiden, the Netherlands, last year, where I was invited to speak. A few Yoshizawa images from that exhibit may be viewed here . (It's what you came for after all... ) Poke around my blog if you want to see what modern paperfolding art looks like---at least my modern paperfolding art. Your appreciation of origami, warms the heart. --Saadya ---------------- ORIGINAL POST (January 2011) Head , by Saadya Made for Jaron Borensztajn of Amsterdam, collector and grandson of Felix Tikotin, the great Japanese Art collector and dealer who...

Last week I had a communication out of the blue from Stephan Weber , first by email then by Skype. Stephan had recently gone back to doing human heads (“masks”) and must have been pointed to my site, where he found a lot of similarity of intent with what I've been doing. I first encountered Weber at “Masters of Origami” in Salzburg, 2005, a show put together by the Red Bull corporation. That was a landmark exhibit, full of first-rate origami some of which was also high art indeed—but Stephan's pair of giant, almost snorting red bulls, struck me as that exhibition's focal point. Immense, vigorous, detailed, absolute icons of latent power, I could not take my eyes off them. Stephan tells me he was tasked by Red Bull to make them about a week before the show opened, and complied. Stephan divides his time between Germany (was it Cologne?) and Patagonia, Chile. What he does in Chile I don't know, except that he likes to go fishing and is rebuilding after a hostel he owned wa...