Origami and kites

[magid]

Yesterday I went with Queue to the opening of the origami art show "Into the Fold" at the Duxbury Art Complex (a little museum); one of the authors his company publishes had some origami in the show.

Wow. Impressive stuff, along a whole range, from geometric to represenational.

Lots of highlights:

• unit origami, including a huge polyhedron, and another shape made of interlocking 3-D triangles (I think it was triangles, anyway)
  
• cool shapes made of paper folded into steps (I don't have a better way to describe it than that, unfortunately)
  
• lots of birds with astonishing amounts of detail (the crow at the link with the shiny gold origami box in its mouth made me laugh, though others were technically more impressive)
  
• little dollar bill people
  
• a Yoda
  
• red happy good-luck bats
  
• an amazing crocodile, the skin impressively leathery (I can't imagine folding all that texture into it)
  
• all different masks (well, faces), each made from a single sheet of paper (though it did make me think about whether sculpting wet paper is quite the same as folding dry paper)
  
• really neat things done with styrofoam cups (no, not origami, but related, and surprisingly interesting to look at)

I'm sure I've forgotten some cool stuff.

At the same time, there was the opening reception for another show, "Flights of Fancy," about kites. Some of them were aerodymic and able to fly, others weren't designed to be airborne at all (the mosaic'd bench was firmly earth-bound). Again, a lot of really wonderful things:

• little balsa-and-paper kites that were light enough to fly even if just pulled through the mostly-still air of the gallery (the artist was there demonstrating)
  
• a leaping (paper mache?) cow-with-halo suspended from the ceiling, titled "Holy Cow"
  
• a large balsa and paper box-style kite... in the shape of an anvil
  
• a bunch of rescued top parts of umbrellas sewn together, with lots of string/rope leading down to a giant-sized white 'umbrella handle'
  
• a picture of a kite, made of tea bags, the tags fluttering behind
  
• (possibly my favorite piece) a tall, tall wall hanging, a black circle at the top, a girl 'falling' down it, and below it descending ever-smaller colored silk rectangles, each with something Alice-y on it, and playing cards fluttering down alongside as well. If only I had a wall tall enough (and however much money; it wasn't stated that pieces were for sale, though, even if I had pots of money)

The museum itself is small, but pretty, the roof an undulating wave of wood. Inside, there are two galleries and a library, in addition to whatever offices and such are around. Outside, there are sculptures dotting the lawn, not huge pieces as at the DeCordova, smaller things, like a little metal 'envelope' lying on a rock, or a small wooden hand reaching up from the edge of the pond, or blue mesh garments on trees (similar to ones at Forest Hills for a while). The pond is in the back, a little one that yesterday had around half a dozen frogs sunning themselves while what seemed like dozens of red dragonflies mated nearby (one pair actually bopping a frog on the nose; they're lucky it wasn't hungry).

Note to self: check back next summer: they have tea ceremonies on the last Sunday of summer months in their Wind in the Pines tea hut.

Noted on the drive down: eight banners hung from overpasses welcoming soldiers home, and two skunks killed in the middle of the road.

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

Two authors. Both Robert Lang and Thomas Hull.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Did you find out whether either of them went to the opening?

[queue.livejournal.com]

No way for me to find out, short of emailing them and asking, which I did not do.

[fairdice.livejournal.com]

Robert Lang is easy to spot once you know him... ah, there's a photo on his web site:

But he lives out in California, and was just out at MIT last year, so I wouldn't expect him to be back.

Tom Hull is (1) cool, (2) local to MA, and (3) on sabbatical this year, so I'd guess he's much more likely to have been there. I met him last year, though not until after we published his Origami quiz in the Intelligencer.

[queue.livejournal.com]

I was out at Lang's talk at MIT last year, so I was pretty sure I could spot him. Didn't see him there, though. I've seen Tom Hull in the office, but only once, and I didn't actually meet him, so I was less sure that I could spot him. The artists supposedly had little badges on, and I only saw two people with origami badges, but I guess it's possible Tom Hull was there and wasn't wearing a badge. Or just showed up later.

Are you on the Intelligencer board? I heard about the Intelligencer for the first time this year in an interesting context: my current bosses started it back when they were with Springer-Verlag :-)

[fairdice.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm one of the co-editors of the "Mathematical Entertainments" column. And I'm rather fond of all of your bosses' work; I've made several plugs for AKP books in my columns in the past few years.

My gig at the Intelligencer means I get credit towards Springer books, and the only thing I don't like about AKP publishing things is that I have to actually pay to get them, while otherwise they'd very likely be Springer and I could get them for free.