Convention covered in WSJ Video Blog

The Convention as covered in a video blog from the Wall Street Journal:

The four-day OrigamiUSA convention, held at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, drew 650 people from a dozen countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia. The largest contingent was from the U.S., followed by Japan. And the convention is serious business — each attendee received  a “survival kit,” which included a packet of origami paper and a giant schedule of the 215 classes offered.

Susan Wettling, of Knoxville, Tenn., was seeking help from Hajime Komiya, a Tokyo-based origami artist. Despite no shared language, Mr. Komiya was walking her through the steps. “I knew he was going to be at this convention and needed his help,” Ms. Wettling said.

Soon after the convention opened on Friday, a crowd had gathered at the colorful display of origami models, which represented the classes offered, ranging in level from simple to complex.

By Saturday morning, 20 classes were sold out, including Jeremy Shafer’s “One-Piece Super Boomerang.” Primarily a juggler and children’s entertainer, Mr. Shafer is the author of three origami books and has an origami YouTube channel with about 25 million views and 70,000 subscribers.
He spent two days designing the one-sheet boomerang. Over the course of 50 rejects, he realized his mistake was in making it like a pinwheel. “I had to do a special move” to get the four arms into an exact “X,” he said.

Robert J. Lang’s 3D origami cat was another sellout class. A physicist and engineer, with dozens of patents, who became a full-time origami artist, Mr. Lang says the math ideas behind the art form of origami have applications in engineering. Such examples are air bags, medical implants as well as solar arrays and telescopes that have to get into the rockets that carry them. “Folding helps make a big thing small in a controlled way,” he said.

Go to the WSJ link to read the rest.

Hat tip: Jeremy Shafer