After receiving requests for many years to start a blog, I've finally set aside my "I don't have the time" excuse and my "I'd rather be making art than blogging" excuse and have succumbed to the challenge. This comes about as a result of an incredible opportunity having become a major part of my life for the past several months. I wanted to share my work with you, and what better way than by birthing a blog! I addition, I promise I'll start carving out time to add to the blog photos of my other work, classes that I teach, etc.
So, here's the story which begins in December of 2012:
The absolutely incredible "Deco Japan: Shaping & Culture" show (read more at
http://www.asiexhibitions.org/Deco-Japan.html ) was scheduled to be on exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History
(http://albuquerquemuseum.org) from February 9 through April 21, 2013. In December of 2012 I was contacted by the Gallery Store Manager and the Gallery Store Creative Director about creating cards, gifts and displays for the upcoming show.
Being a mixed media artist working primarily in paper, this was a perfect opportunity for me. I would be able to surround myself with sheets and sheets and sheets of my favorite paper -- Japanese Yuzen. The word
"yuzen" refers to the elaborate, gold-highlighted patterns originally used in the Kyoto textile industry -- these patterns are silkscreened onto large sheets of base paper usually made from kozo (mulberry) paper combined with sulfite.
I said YES YES YES - make that in all caps, bold and underlined!!!!
So, I filled my studio with glorious yuzen paper and went to work cutting and folding and creating.
Below follows a pictoral tour throughout the Museum's Gallery Store - highlighting the fruits of my labors. Most of these photographs were taken in February just before the show opened to the public.
As you approach the entrance to the Museum, the first thing you see in the Gallery Store's front windows are my long 9-crane origami ristras interspersed between beautiful Japanese paper lanterns. More about ristras below.
Once inside the Museum and on your way into the Gallery Store, this is the first display table you encounter. To the left of the blue Deco Japan show catalog are my custom-packaged origami crane ornaments made from white yuzen paper with finely embossed gold highlights (close-up photo below next photo).
And, here is a glass bowl filled with my crane ornaments in a huge array of assorted colors and patterns. These ornaments are made using the "classic" crane, but are packaged flat-folded for easy retail and so their wing tips are protected.
Each crane ornament is folded from a 5" square of yuzen paper. A glass or gemstone bead below the crane's body anchors the cord used for hanging. When unpackaged and the wings of the crane are are folded down, the crane will be in "flying" position as shown on the metal hanger.
Origami crane earrings -- each crane is folded from a 1-3/4" square of yuzen paper. For those of you who know origami, folding something from a tiny sheet of paper requires a lot of patience, and a lot of creasing using just my fingernails! Below is a close-up of the earrings.
The earrings are adorned with beads of metal, glass or gemstone, and I use gold-plated or surgical steel earwires. I double-coat the cranes with an eco-friendly water-resistant glaze.
Because the Gallery Store started receiving special requests for slightly larger earrings -- for the people who like more of a dangle -- I additionally designed earrings using 2" squares of paper and dropping the cranes from a 1-1/2" chain.
Here is a close-up of the larger earrings.
Sprinkled throughout the jewelry cases are my origami lotus blossoms. Each blossom has 24 petals and 8 leaves. The petals are folded from yuzen paper and the leaves are Nepalese lokta paper. Also seen in this first photo are local artist Marcia Sednek's recycled tinwork pins.
Here are three lotus blossoms featured in a corner case -- from leaf tip to leaf tip, the blossoms measure 4" in diameter.
For years I have been making crane ristras in assorted sizes from assorted papers. Ristra is a Spanish word which means a string (of something). When I lived in Mexico, a ristra usually referred to a string of garlic hung in a kitchen for use in cooking, or in a business hung for good luck. Here in New Mexico, when people talk about ristras, they almost always mean ristras of red chiles that are hung from portals and porches. My ristras for the Deco Japan show are ristras of cranes with long luxurious tails of yarn and ribbon in colors complementary to the colors of the yuzen papers in the cranes. These cranes are all folded from 6" squares of paper.
For those of you who have been to New Mexico, you know how much sun we have! Here is an interior shot of my long 9-crane ristras made especially for this set of corner windows in the Gallery Store. (Due to the intense outdoor sunlight, it is difficult to capture the colors in the ristras.)
Here is an interior silhouetted shot of twenty-four of the 9-crane ristras hanging in the large corner windows near the Museum entrance.
And, while we are speaking of ristras of cranes -- here is a shot of another set of corner windows containing ristras of all-white cranes folded from non-watermarked white parchment paper. These cranes are much larger -- folded from 8-1/2" squares -- and the ristras are in assorted sizes of one, two, three, five or eight cranes.
Here is a container of my origami butterfly pins, and a close-up. The butterfllies are also folded from yuzen paper and double-coated with eco-friendly water-resistant glaze. From wing tip to wing tip, the butterflies measure about 2-1/4" wide.
Throughout the Gallery Store are scattered my 5x7" greeting cards. There is a bin of kimono cards behind the butterfly pins.
Origami crane cards in the wooden drawer and kimono cards in the plexiglas bin.
Heart cards on the red stand.
Here is a close-up of one of my iris folding hearts made from yuzen paper -- the term "iris folding" refers to a technique where strips of folded paper are applied behind an aperture and around a central focal point as in the iris of the eye or the iris of the shutter of a camera.
Here is one of my yuzen paper kimono cards -- I usually use two different textured cardstocks for the backings on my kimono cards -- thus the false appearance of wavy lines in the backgrounds - my camera seems to get a little confused when I attempt to photograph lots of different textures!
And, just for fun, here is a shot of about half of the kimonos I folded for the initial delivery of four dozen kimono cards -- I racked up all of the kimonos in my own little garment district!!!!!
Here's one of my crane cards -- this is the traditional "flapping bird" form folded in such a way that I can mount the bird flat on a greeting card. Behind the bird I generally use a complementary patterned paper with a single color cardstock behind the patterned paper.
This concludes the end of my Deco Japan tour!! Below are several more photographs of other of my cards that are currently carried in the Gallery Store (in the future the shop will be carrying more of my cards and gifts - watch for future updates).
H.H. Dalai Lama -- one of my hand-cut collage greeting cards. Close-up below.
I create my hand-cut collage cards much in the same way I imagine a caricature artist works. I study several photos of the person, zero in on his or her unique features and start cutting! His Holiness has a tilted smile, apple cheeks, and unmatched eyebrows. When I make each batch of Dalai Lama cards, I smile the entire day.
You'll find my Calavera Sugar Skull Cards (in Spanish Calavera means skull) in the "Day of the Dead Department" of the Gallery Store.
I use white handmade paper for the skull, and my background papers are black and red cardstock, with white lace paper on top of the red. I have great fun when making these cards -- playing with all the tiny shapes in lots and lots of colors. Note the iguana cheeks and the crescent moon dimples. And, for the superstitious folks, I don't use black cats on all the cards -- each card is one-of-a-kind.
