I love paper. I like drawing on it, writing on it, reading it. I like the way it feels and all the possibilities that can stem from something so bland as a single white square of it. One of the oft-told apocrypha of my childhood is that one christmas I was sitting on Santa's knee and upon being asked what I wanted for christmas, I answered 'A big roll of sticky'. Barbie be damned, all I wanted was a big roll of sticky tape so I could stick pieces of paper together and make things. When I got older I became enchanted with the story of Sadako and have contributed twice to sending one thousand paper cranes to Hiroshima's Children's Peace Monument.
I started thinking about this all again the other day because I saw a fantastic documentary called Between The Folds. I just love watching passionate people get excited about something wonderfully esoteric that they've adopted as a passion. At first I thought the documentary would just be a series of lovely, slightly crazy people talking about making animals out of paper. However, Vanessa Gould has crafted an elegant documentary that flies through the realms of craft, to art movements and mathematicians exploring the possibilities of paper as a modeling tool.
I think it is something very special if someone can manage to get me so excited about maths. This guy conveys infectious enthusiasm for the subject:
As well as making incredible mathematical origami
I also stumbled, quite by accident, upon James Roper, who has incorporated origami into his sculptural installations.
Construct, Into The Fold exhibition 2005-2008
I want to go home, ignore my obligations and fold creases to make something unexpected. I want to go and write letters to someone I haven't talked to in a long time, with a pen and a nice piece of old paper. Go home and make a cup of tea and curl up and inhale the smell of old book pages.
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