Back to Stonybrook (well, sort of)

Curator of Stonybrook University Charles Wang Center Jinyoung emailed me the other day and asked me if I was interested in doing a few workshops in fall this year. They will be online workshops of paper crafts. I accepted the offer and started working on them. I went to Stonybrook 5 years ago to be part of a group show Origami Heaven. This time I will not physically be back there but still it was nice to be able to do something for them again. Here are a couple of shots of animal nightlight projects I am planning on doing workshops on.

Origami Heaven review on the New York Times

A review on Origami Heaven exhibit was on the New York Times on 12/5/2015.I am truly honored to be part of this group show!

 

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.

Origami Heaven piece

I finally finished the diptych for the paper craft show at Stony Brook University, Long Island, NY, which I just found out is called "Origami Heaven". I documented them before shipping them to the museum.

This is how they look side by side.

This is the panel #1 on the left.

A detail of the dove.

Scored, cut and painted feathers.

The feathers are placed in the way which they progressively move further away from the blue background as they travel from left to right of the picture plane. This was done by paper sticks of various lengths lifting the feathers from underneath. This photo also shows how the white rope disappears into the black wooden frame.

 The panel #2 on the right.

A detail shot of the atomic bombs falling from (or suspended in) the sky. They all have folded braces behind them that lift the bombs away from the background surface.

Just like the panel #1, this is how the white rope this child is holding disappears into the black wooden frame.

A close up shot of the child. He was made out of one continuous sheet of paper, and partially hand colored.

I really don't know how to understand this particular piece. Partly because I have never done something that was straightforward and yet loaded with a social meaning like this. So this piece still feels very different and foreign to me. The big question I constantly struggled with while working on this project was how to describe abstract notions of collective fear and hope in art. Those emotions are usually triggered by specific circumstances and incidents. How to translate those emotions we feel on a collective level as human beings was very difficult for me to figure out. I didn't want this piece to be overly emotional or illustrative, and yet I wanted it to have a certain impact on the audience on the emotional and aesthetic levels (sounds like a lofty goal). I decided to use symbolism even though they might be seen as clichés. I don't disregard the value of clichés and don't necessarily see them in a negative light. I find there is a kind of cultural weight in clichés as a universal language no matter how banal they might seem. I did feel a need to add something more to the piece so that the work would somehow transcend the superficial and over-used symbolism. I tried to find a solution in the design and execution of the piece. But, to be honest, I am still not sure if this piece turned out to be successful or not. I guess I will just have to see how people will respond to it once it's hung on the wall...

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.