Stonybrook Charles B. Wang Center Paper Craft Workshops Updates

I worked on 3 paper craft workshop videos for these past few days. I just finished editing the last one and uploaded it to Google Drive to share with the Stonybrook University Charles B. Wang Center. Now I can take a breather and relax a little. The Center made an announcement of my workshops on their website as below. It's official now. For these workshops, I had to alter my original designs to fit the Center's concept and the direction of the workshops. First, I was a little reluctant to do so, but as I was working on them, I realized actually the altered versions were much more marketable because of the smaller sizes and the simpler designs. I am glad they asked me to do so. 

Origami Heaven Exhibit

This week I attended the opening of the group show "Origami Heaven" at Stony Brook University's Charles B. Wang Center, Long Island, NY. I met so many talented artists and the people who organized the show. The space was impressive. I was truly honored and humbled to have my piece included among those artists with such impressive credentials.

The show statement.

The banner of the exhibit by the entrance of the building.

Panoramic view of the second floor gallery. My piece is on the left.

My piece titled, "Hope and Fear in the New Dark Age".

Jule Waibel's folded textile design.

Jule Waibel's fashion design using origami techniques.

Kumi Yamashita's very sophisticated paper pieces with cast shadows.

Kumi Yamashita's paper airplane with her pencil drawing.

Madeline del Toro Cherney's paper bow ties.

Qi Hu's paper hat 1.

Qi Hu's paper hat 2.

Thomas Crain's wooden origami.

Wonju Seo's enormous fabric origami. Photo courtesy of Charles B. Wang Center.

I am explaining my process and how I designed this particular piece. Photo courtesy of Charles B. Wang Center.

I am giving away free animal templates to my audience. Photo courtesy of Charles B. Wang Center.

Paper Craft Exhibition

I was invited to be a part of a group exhibition of origami and other paper folding related art at Charles B. Wang Center of Stony Brook University, Long Island, NY. This exhibition is to ccommemorate the atomic bombs and 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II. It will open on September 9th, 2015 and run through December 31st. I decided to work on a completely new piece for this show. The concept is my reflection on the current state of the world we are in especially on a very frustrating result of the Nuclear Anti Proliferation Treaty meeting at the UN Headquarter in NYC this past May. It is very disheartening to realize that, after all these years, we are repeating the same mistakes over and over again as if we never learned anything from our past. I thought about the concepts long and hard and finally decided to make it simple and straightforward. This is not conceptual mumbo-jumbo high art and decidedly so.

After a series of revisions on the designs of the piece, I finally settled with a diptych format. Below are a few work in progress shots I snapped.

Some of the atomic bombs falling from the sky. I made total 28 of them. These are going to be on the first panel.

This boy will be standing under the falling bombs against the burning sky. I will probably color him a llittle.

This is the dove on the second panel flying against the blue sky.

These are some of the feathers falling from the sky behind the dove. I made approx. 60 of these.

A detail shot of the feathers. It took me a long time to score all those lines on them. They were all made by hand individually. These 2 panels will be connected by a red thread the dove is carrying with its beak and the end of the thread will be held by the boy. I have a mental image of how this piece is going to look when it's done. I hope the actual finished piece is going to look as good as I am hoping...

Update on Monday, July 20, 2015 at 12:25PM by Hiroshi Hayakawa

I colored the boy. This looks better.