This year the OUSA annual convention was about a month later than usual. You’d think that would give me more time to prepare, but no, I was busy doing other things. I had a whole list in my mind of new models I wanted to fold, but after an explosive year or exploration last year, there was a bit of regression to the mean. I did fold a handful of new versions of existing designs, some of which I never quite perfected, and are now revised and refined. These include my Spacecat, Platypus, Heavy Rocket, and my Semi-Sunken Icosahedron, (which could probably use a more evocative if less technically accurate name; it looks something like a soccer ball composed of eighty triangles). Most of these I folded from a new kind of handmade tissue foil which I bought at last year’s convention. It’s very attractive, well made, and comes in a great variety of colors including bright, dark and earth tones. Some have a bit of sparkle or texture. Very good for models that require sculpting that you don’t want to wetfold.
I arrived Friday evening with Jeannie and Michelle. The convention was at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan again this year, right at the north end of Times Square. The first thing was to check in and set up my exhibit, which also included a bunch of classic models. I have a pretty deep bench so I rounded it out with whatever fit my mood. After dinner we met a bunch of origami friends including John Montroll and Brian Webb, who hasn’t been to a New York convention in quite a few years, so it was great to see him. It seems everyone had a story about where they spent the eclipse. John is up to his tenth Origami Symphony Book, the conceit being each is divided into four “movements” which explore a related set of models or subjects in some depth. So he had lots of fun diagrams to share.
Saturday was the first day of classes. I didn’t do any classes in the morning, but at lunchtime Jeannie, Michelle and I went shopping to the gundam anime store, Kinokuniya, and Midtown Comics. I was there mostly to look around, but I was inspired to buy a Mecchagodzilla action figure. We had lunch at Kati Roll, which I hadn’t been to in a long time. In the afternoon I taught my Spacecat. The class was full and it went over well. It’s a pretty complex model, but everyone finished and had time to do the sculpting. After that I folded a couple different cat models from other creators. When classes were done it was time for the annual meeting. I took on a new function this year as the election proxy. It was my job to count the votes for election for the officers and board members of the organization and announce them at the meeting.
At dinner time we went to a local bar called Names and Faces. Back when the convention was at the Fashion Institute, we often used to go a neighborhood bar Mustang Sally’s at the end of the night. It grew into a real scene over the years. Brian and Paul Frasco were trying to bring this idea back and found a good place near the hotel. It was a pretty good crowd, but since it was only dinner time everyone went back to the convention. A few returned to the bar for late-night folding.
Sunday I took Brian Chan’s lecture on origami photography. I found this very helpful, especially the focus on lighting. At lunchtime I ran the annual Paper Airplane contest. This was my second year at it. It’s mostly kids but they really get into it. There’s three categories: distance, accuracy and time aloft. The prizes are gift certificates for the store where you can buy origami books and paper and tools and trinkets. There was some kind of street fair going on outside the hotel, so for lunch I got some kind of rice bowl and zeppoli.
After lunch I taught my Semi-Sunken Icosahedron. This is a very advanced model, but I’ve been practicing and I brought some tools (paperclips and chopsticks) for the class to use to help hold the model together and poke inside while midway thru folding it. Unfortunately a few of the students didn’t listen to directions and messed up precreasing the grid. But most went on the more challenging 3-D part. Afterwards a couple of the students came up to me and said they really liked the model and plan to fold it for the giant folding competition that evening. I said it almost certainly wouldn’t work but collapse under its own weight.
That evening we went out to dinner with John Montroll and Pei, a convention special guest from China. Pei does beautiful work that is sculptural, sometimes very complex, and super expressive. He has a great eye for form. His signature piece is a deer with antlers like a tree full of many, many tiny flowers, folded from a single square. John has travelled extensively in Asia and was quite happy serving as a guide, making Pei feel at ease, asking about things China and telling him things about America.
After dinner was the giant folding contest and shaw’nuff there was a team folding my model from the afternoon, a giant pink soccer ball about a yard across, made up of triangles, folded from a single ten-foot square of paper. Paper that big tends to resemble cloth when you work with it, all floppy. But I underestimated the strength and rigidity of the form. The triangles scaled up from about an inch on a side to a foot, but that was still small enough for the paper to hold its shape on the network of creases. Very impressive; indeed they won a prize.
Monday was a bit quieter since a good fraction of the people didn’t stay for the last day. I took a class of Pei’s, a Hippocampus with an unusual and creative way of making the tail. In the afternoon I took a class on pentagonal flowers, followed by Boice Wong doing one of his box-pleated human figures. I ended it up doing a class on towel folding, which introduced a couple moves outside the regular origami vocabulary such as rolling and twisting. The perfect way to cap a weekend of crazy complex stuff.
There’s always a banquet Monday night. The last couple years the venue has been pretty dismal, but this year it was at Carmine’s, a big Italian restaurant, the kind place that has pictures of guys like Dean Martin on the walls. It’s right off Times Square, in fact where Ollie’s used to be, right across the street from where I used to work. We had a whole room upstairs to ourselves, with a bar even. Perfect. The food was great: lasagna and chicken and eggplant parmesan, and salads and appetizers and pistachio cannolis for desert. Brian and I had a couple cocktails too. It was a family style situation, so in the end they said anyone who was local could take home a tray of food. Jeannie grabbed some eggplant and pasta and a tray of cannolis. Yum.
Then it was time to say goodbye. Bam! came and went until the next convention.
