From the Columbus Dispatch...

[steingar]

Passion for shaping paper truly an interest in creasing
Thursday, March 26, 2009 3:02 AM
BY BILL MAYR
For The Columbus Dispatch

Some Ohioans have joined the fold for origami.

Artists, scientists, business people and others enjoy the traditional Japanese art of paper shaping.

"Origami in Ohio," an exhibit opening Friday at the Paper Circle gallery in Nelsonville, will reveal a pursuit prospering far from its roots. About 10 artists will be featured in the show, organized by the 22-member Capital Area Paper Shapers.

Granville resident Monica Salisbury founded the group less than two years ago.

"I rediscovered origami a few years ago," she said. "I hadn't folded in a long, long time.

"I really needed help, and I started looking for a group because I needed other folders. There wasn't anything in Ohio. . . . So I started a group."

Origami dates from at least a millennium ago. Japan is considered its home, although other Asian and European cultures developed similar art.

For the most part, pieces -- called models -- are created from a single sheet of paper without cutting or gluing.

Folders usually work from existing ideas, adjusting as they proceed instead of designing from scratch.

Origami, Salisbury said, is easy to learn and inexpensive to make.

Craft stores sell origami paper, but photocopier paper suits some projects.

Anne Roberts, a group member and an art teacher, includes origami in her classes at Alexander Elementary School in the Athens County town of Albany. She also teaches adults.

"I think anybody can learn it," she said, "and that's part of the fun."

In just a few hours, Roberts made an origami chess set, with pawns about 1.5 inches tall and the queens about 3.5 inches.

Origami, with its precise folds and multitude of geometric shapes, attracts folks with a math or science bent.

Exhibit A: Michael Weinstein, an Ohio State University molecular geneticist, has written two books featuring origami pieces.

Does he have an artistic background?

"Not at all," he said. "I'm a scientist."

He began making origami as a child: "It seems to be something that I'm mentally wired to do."

Weinstein, a pilot, has created a book, Stationery Flight, that features paper airplanes.

"You can make them, and they fly really well," he said.

Dublin resident Nick Albright, who studied electrical engineering in college and joined an online business, also learned origami as a child.

These days, it offers a welcome change from work.

"You can sit down, relax; it's very peaceful," he said.

Albright makes animals in an hour or less.

The time required "really depends on what level you are folding at, how complex it is. There are simple pieces for beginners -- five to 15 minutes for the easier stuff, if not shorter."

Westerville native Christopher Welsh, who lives in Cincinnati and works as a creative-arts coordinator for a church, focuses on modular origami -- "building blocks" for larger forms.

His representation of a Sierpinski tetrahedron, based on a fractal named after a Polish mathematician, has 1,725 modules.

"Each one started out as a 3 1/2 -inch-square piece of paper," he said. "I sat down and put them together. That probably took me about two weeks.

"Talk about no life, huh?"

Actually, it's a wonderful life, most folders would say.

Capital Area Paper Shapers plans a convention in 2010. For more information, call 740-334-4213 or visit http://www.ohiopaperfolders. com.

billmayr@mac.com

[HankSimon]

Pardon me for the thread hijack & crosspost, but this is also from Columbus, Ohio.

For those of you who like to design Elephant Models, here is a video of the newborn baby elephant, born at the Columbus, Ohio Zoo on March 27, 2009. I don't know how long this video will be up, so you may have to search for it.

http://www.columbuszoo.org/story/

For those of us who don't design elephant models, this is an opportunity to go "awwwww".

Enjoy,
- Hank Simon