06-28-03
I can't remember if my first OUSA convention happened before or after 9/11.
I think 2000 or 2001 was when I first started discovering modern origami designs. Then went to my first WCOG meeting. I'm thinking maybe it was after 9/11, but am not totally sure.
Maybe 2002 was my first OUSA? I think the previous year I had met Joel Bauer; and he eventually was vacationing in Hawaii where he discovered a street artist named Won Park. It's because of Joel Bauer that Won Park was put in touch with the origami community and attended his first OUSA meeting (If it wasn't in 2002, maybe it was 2004? And Won and I became connected through Joel).
I was familiar with a few people by name prior to my first OUSA, due to correspondence on the origami mailing list. Andrew Hans (we started corresponding when I, John Andrisan, and Jim Cowling each independently came up with a version of Stephen Delecat's $ t-shirt with tie, then shared photos. I remember back then being shocked how knowledge of how to fold the model quickly spread to the east coast and throughout; and I believe Delecat then released diagrams the following year in The Paper). Rob Hudson was another one. He and I childishly broke lances on the O-List and I think an admin had to step in and admonish us. I thought it would be awkward during our first meeting, but things were cool. I believe we may have finally met when he took my Louis Cooper Angel class. I thought he was a crusty old guy but it turned out he was young. 😂 I enjoyed his humor on the Origami-L when he and I ribbed June Sakamoto with being the most beautiful lady in origami.
Through the Origami Mailing List, I had contacted Fumiaki Kawahata and asked him for permission to teach his Jedi Master Yoda model and also sell ones I folded, in the Gold Mine (selling is how I managed to afford my trip to NYC). He said yes, but probably not call it Yoda because he said he hadn't consulted George Lucas. 😀
My Yoda class involved teaching how I bonded tissue foil with unryu to get the color and texture for the Jedi Master.
I remember my class took place in the hospitality area of the Fashion Institute of Technology, where folders usually hung out between classes to chill, share, and fold at leisure.
As I was teaching my class, I pulled out a can of spray glue to show how I bonded the paper to the foil paper. Up to that point, it hadn't occurred to me how that probably shouldn't be done indoors. Well, sitting behind me at another table was Gay Merrill Gross. And after her initial shock and horror, boy, did she lay into me! She was in a bit of panic, informing me about her health condition. I don't quite remember how we got through that first impression and initial interaction, but we became friends after that. She was one of the highlights of my trips to OUSA conventions.
I remember once, I think she told me a political joke that might have involved a storigami- I do remember some sort of prop with the joke. And the joke was a rib at George W. Bush. I gently let her know I was a supporter of Bush Jr. She had such a sweet reaction of shock on her face and apologetic, "oh...". It wasn't one of disappointment in me for my choice in political support, but one of surprise (how can someone as nice as Michael Sanders be a Republican?) an embarrassment with the assumption that the whole world hated Bush. I reassured her that it was okay and I wasn't in the least bit offended. I may have even found the joke clever and amusing.
Over time, I stopped attending OUSA Conventions yearly. But Gay would occasionally remember me and share something of her work via email (I wish she were on social media- namely FB- so we could have shared more of what was going on in our lives).
I hadn't been in touch with Gay in quite a while. When I saw a mutual friend make mention of her in an FB post, I asked how Gay was doing. Well, within the next couple of days, people began messaging me about how Gay had passed a couple of weeks ago.
Gay was one of those origami luminaries that I admired and appreciated and who I took for granted would be around forever. Even with her seeming physical fragility. I just assumed....
I've missed her; and now that she's gone, I really miss her and have the regret of never having expressed to her how much she meant to me. How much I learned from her.
One of the things I always wanted to learn from her was how she fanned a stack of paper like a magician. I first saw her do this in an old Home & Gardens video (available back in the early 2000s but can't find it anymore) that featured either PCOC (maybe in San Francisco?) or some other origami event. And in the video, Gay fanned a stack of paper, then took one sheet and told a storigami that involved a whale and a penguin. I used to know it and if I gave it a moment, can probably retrieve memory of the tale and the folding sequence. That and Anne Bedrick's teaching tale with Deg Farrelly's butterfly are the only ones I've ever bothered to learn. (https://www.giladorigami.com/SW_tale.html)
Gay did show me how she did it one year as she knew of my interest in it; but for some reason, I didn't bother to practice it myself and now memory of how she did it has faded.
Memory of Gay and what she contributed to the world, however, will remain firmly fixed in the best corner of my heart.
https://www.facebook.com/OrigamiUSA/posts/989061410009069
