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The Gardener

| wonko

People with “green thumbs” are a treasure to behold.Gardiner

As someone with a not-quite-green, more of a dirty yellow thumb I am in awe of people who delight in growing things.

Our College gardener/groundsman John has retired, while I am as jealous as anything, I know he will have a fabulous time. Ever friendly, it has been a pleasure to share a workplace with him. The College will miss his charming style, happy greetings and zeal for gardens.

He retired on the sly, which is the right way to escape our asylum – the exit rituals can be exhausting so I understand he went on term break and retired earlier than first advertised – good on him, I will probably try to do the same.

I made this figurine for him, as a way of saying thanks. I hope i get a chance to give it to him. Enjoy retirement John, may your gardens bloom and be ever greener on the other side of working life.

540: Parliament

| wonko

Voting is something democratic societies hold as an important right. Some counties have compulsory voting, most allow citizens to choose whether they want to vote – all too often the result is the same – groups of opinionated, empty-headed people are elected to represent the views of the common people.540Parliament4

Anyone who knows me, realises I take the political piss whenever I can – voting only encouraged politicians to think they are more important than the rest of us, but they are just us, right, paid to argue (usually paid a LOT more that those of us who enjoy a good argument). 540Parliament

We organise candidates into “parties”, “alliances” and “coalitions”, pick “leaders” and rally behind them like their personalities are what really matters. All too often, in the end, we end up with the government we deserve. Continue reading →

535: Double Tsuru (1)

| wonko

Browsing the internet, as you do, I came upon a chance find of an amazing archive of pages from what is thought to be the oldest Origami book published – “Hiden Senbazuru Orikata (The Secret of One Thousand Cranes Origami)”, first published in 1797:535DoubleTsuru

Looks like i have a new project, making Tsuru (traditional Cranes) in multiples on a single (cut) sheet – looks like it is going to be a fascinating ride.535DoubleTsuruInspiration

Continue reading →

Comedy – Tragedy

| wonko

Doodling with a single uncut A3 sheet, I managed to fold something approaching both masks of the Drama “Comedy and Tragedy” thingimage

Using a Joisel-like face thing twice, I think this model has potential as it uses one piece of paper to realise the whole enchilada. Continue reading →

533: Gjerde’s Pinwheel Tessellation

| wonko

After leafing through Eric Gjerde’s “Origami Tessellations” I knew I had found the motherload of paper punishment:Tessellation6

This is the “Pinwheel” tessellation and it has a hidden beauty. I am learning that a tessellation is a regular repeating pattern, magically interlocking “molecules” that go together like tiles on a mosaic floor.

Usually based on a grid (at least initially), this one is based on a triangle grid, and features closed hexagon twists and open triangle twists that compliment each others vertices very neatly. Backlit they reveal an intense and curious but often completely different geometry. Continue reading →

Tessellations

| wonko

Folding is something I do, often to stave off boredom. When my students are working on assignments, I get large slabs of time where I need to be there but am not needed, so I bend paper relentlessly:t3

Folding grids is painstaking, but excellent discipline – accuracy is the key Continue reading →

531: Joisel’s Horse Head

| wonko

Many beauties reside in Eric Joisel’s folding legacy, most have no hints as to how he achieved them. The “Horse Head” design exists as an obscured crease pattern from his original notes:531JoiselHorseHead

A friend of this blog (Hi Jean-Baptiste!) offered his interpretation of the crease pattern and invited me to try folding it as he was having trouble with the collapse, so I thought why not. I need all the practice I can get on interpreting CPs. Continue reading →

528: Joisel’s Pangolin

| wonko

Few Origami models reach Iconic status, few have the charm and grace of Eric Joisel’s Pangolin. I thought I would have a go at this fold:528Pangolin

Based, in part, on a field of diagonal graduated pleats that are “popped” into scaley plates, shaped simply to suggest tail, head and feet, his folds have a unique life breathed into them. Continue reading →

524: Happy Valentines Day

| wonko

I find it fascinating that there are so many models and folding techniques I have yet to try. The “Magic Rose Cube” is a case in point – I am amazed I have never folded it:v4

Such a beautiful little modular, 3 pieces the flower, 3 slightly different pieces the leaves, slots together into a cube easily, unfurls beautifully. Continue reading →

520: Blackstar

| wonko

Having pre-ordered the new album by David Bowie, I was delighted when it arrived in my postbox yesterday morning (Monday 11 January 2016). Much hyped, I put it on loud, in high rotation for the day, each listen affirming a new favorite Bowie Album.520BlackStarCover

In the afternoon we went grocery shopping, to return home to the news that Bowie had passed on, after a long and private battle with cancer.520BlackStarScale

Few aspects of the music industry were not influenced by this artist.

His music woke me up as a teenager, a welcome relief from the bang and twang that monopolised the music charts. Continue reading →

517: Darth Paper – The Fold Awakens

| wonko

I will admit it, I have been a Star Wars fan since it was possible to be one. I saw the original movies many times in the cinema DECADES before my kids thought it would be cool to do the same with the new ones:517DarthPapers

The original 3 movies were special (well, they WERE before Lucas began messing with them again), the “Force” was this unexplained thing that made sense (subsequently RUINED by the introduction of “midiclorians” or some such shit), space ships where sterile white, blasters went “pew pew pew” but left no blood spatter and it was kind of ok to crush on your sister until you realised she was your sister. Continue reading →

Decoration

| wonko

Although I began folding paper when I was 11, I peaked at about 13 (back then, in my own mind) by mastering Jack Skillman’s “Jackstone”:scale

I had bought Robert Harbin’s Origami book series, the model featured in book 2 at the back which meant it wqas hard. It seems the Jackstone was at the time a measure of the complexity of the art and, strangely, the geometry made sense to me – so much so that, for whatever reason I committed it to memory and still fold it today. (read Dave Lister’s BOS account of it)detail

It is a masterpiece of pre-folding – that you unfold, turn inside out and collapse along existing lines – the magic still delights and fascinates me to this day. Continue reading →

Joisel in Memoriam

| wonko

On the 10th of October, 2010, the origami world lost a living treasure and master of the art of Origami – Monsieur Eric Joisel.MrDanny

To “breathe life into paper” is something I am inspired to do as a DIRECT reaction and influence of his work. To think more about the art and less about the technique is challenging, but a worthy struggle.

Eric Joisel – your legacy lives on. May all paper folders learn a little from your art, be inspired by your spirit and fold from the heart.

About Face

| wonko

Faces are things we humans are born to recognise. We see them everywhere, we can recognise them with the barest of visual clues:

 Apparently even magpies do facial recognition, remembering the dive-bombing victim and their seeming boundary transgressions for years.

I am interested in the structure of faces, particularly how little paper manipulation is necessary to evoke a face that embodies an expression, the visual manifestation of attitude and mood.

Inspired by the work of Junior Fritz Jacquet, I am exploring how to fold faces from flat sheets without edge incursions, with the hope that it translates into tube-folded faces – we shall see. I have documented my progress below: Continue reading →

Numbers? What Numbers?

| wonko

I am often asked why some of my posts are preceded with a number. I must admit to folding paper, on and off, since I was 11, but more recently I took it back up again as a sort of physical therapy to convince myself (as much as anything) that I could control my nerve-damaged hands after spinal reconstruction.

The numbering makes sense to me, really. On January 2011 I (in retrospect rather naively) decided to try and fold a different model every day for a year. I numbered the models as I folded them, using that index to catalogue the unique folds I managed to achieve.

When I got to 365, I ran out of 2011 and no longer had the one a day madness that was actually really interesting.

I decided to keep folding. When I fold something I had never folded before it too is granted a number. I will continue – it is a useful metric for me, might be an organiser for you but it reminds me of the staggering variety of models out there, and reminds me of the fact that I have really only tried a tiny fraction of them so far.

Now you know …