There’s more to paper than little cranes

Posted by Britta Gustafson on Oct 20th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

By Britta Gustafson

Today’s topic is… paper art! A few months ago, a friend and I put together instructions for making a fancy paper icosahedron and that got me interested in paper art in general. It applies endless amounts of skill and creativity to something mundane, and the results are often geometric in a nice handmade way.

Some paper art consists of complex folding and sometimes cutting of static pieces of paper, like classic origami, such as this origami tesselation called “Thirteen Kawasaki Roses” and others by that artist, or like these odd curved paper hats. I also like these high-fashion dresses made of cut-out paper.

There are also some sophisticated paper animations, reaching back to the history of movies since a very early animation was made that way. “My Paper Mind” by Javan Ivey is both impressive and pretty, and the page includes some information about how he constructed it. “Process Enacted” by Jordan C Greenhalgh is a self-aware stop-motion movie made with Polaroids, which I count as paper even though they’re really photographs.

Other paper art plays with the role of paper itself, especially this wrapping paper that looks like wraps of different kinds: bubble wrap, butcher paper, sandwiches, bandages and aluminum foil. On the other hand, there’s a wool tapestry that looks like a piece of notebook paper, including little punch holes.

“Papercraft” is popular on the web, with entire websites that share instructions for making little paper models or toys of various things. The only papercraft item I’ve sat down and made, though, is this ceiling cat. It now peeks out from the ceiling of the College of Creative Studies computer lab, watching people… type.

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