Pasadena Origami Festival at Storrier Stearns Japanese Gardens

Meher McArthur:

Looking for something fun to do with the family this Sunday? Come to the Pasadena Origami Festival at the Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, from 10am to 4pm. Come and learn how to fold flowers, animals and modular forms with expert folders like Joel Stern and Jared Needle of the Pacific Ocean Paperfolders (POP) in the gorgeous setting of our Japanese Garden. I will be giving a talk about contemporary origami art and signing copies of my new book New Expressions in Origami Art and my earlier book Folding Paper. 

So today I spent time at the Gardens teaching the Thai Tulip:




In between teaching, I managed to film Joel Stern telling teaching tales:

This one is a Storigami by Christine Petrell Kallevig:

Photos here.

Frog Prince Trick with Origami Folding & Storytelling

 Combining origami storytelling with a bit of card magic:

The Frog Prince Trick is considered by many who study the finer arts of magic to be a modern day classic. It was first devised by Mike Close and published on 'Workers 2' out of the 'Workers' DVD and book series. He was the first person to fold a playing card into an Origami frog and then incorporate that folded card into a card routine.

Pulling Art from Thin Air

Megan Hicks is a wonderful storyteller who also utilizes origami to engage the listeners' imagination.


Here's an example of one of her teaching tales, posted just in time for next year's Valentine's Day (^_~) :

She has a wonderful post illustrating how "what goes around comes around", and how we impact lives both seen and unseen; and our influence upon the world, like ripples in a pond, can reach far and wide.....and come back to us:

And then at lunch…something Came Around.

Behind me in the lunch line, one of the women in my session thanked me for giving her a couple of new paperfolding stories. She said, “I already do a story with the paper cup. And I do that hat — you know, the one with the feathers…”

I perked up.

“…and the little girl — Triangle Girl…”

I got very still.

“Tell me that story,” I said.

Gay Merrill Gross Origami Poem

When I first discovered the wonders of the internet and having my own computer around 2001-2002 around the same time I was becoming immersed in origami, I remember being fascinated with Gay's storytelling during a segment of the Carol Duvall Show on the HGTV website, in which they covered an origami conference, I think in San Francisco.  I think this is the one:

"The Carol Duvall Show," aired two episodes (934 and 941)  showing footage from last year's Pacific Coast Origami Conference (PCOC) in San Francisco. Their website contains a 4 minute video clip from the second episode. http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/cr_paper_crafts_origami/article/0,1789,HGTV_3293_1383567,00.html

But the episode is no longer available.  I'd love to see it again but don't know if anyone has a link to a video clip of that segment.

At OUSA, Gay showed me the wonderful way she fanned out the stack of paper in that presentation.  I'll have to ask who she learned that from; as she told me, but I forget.

Here is the poem to one of the teaching tales I remember from that PCOC in 2000:

Did you hear about the kite that bumped its nose

and bent its tail

turned into a whale

stood on its head

and became a penguin instead

but the last I heard

it was a flapping bird

I wonder if any of you who have not heard this storigami before can guess as to what the folds are (at the end of the tale, you have a version of a flapping bird).

Music + Paperfolding = Singing Storigami!

Joel Stern writing in to the O-List:

Hi all,

As coordinator of Pacific Ocean Paperfolders (POP), I often meet people from different backgrounds and professions who find new ways to use origami. One of our regular attendees, Anne Kelly-Saxenmeyer, who runs a music and art program for toddlers called PLAY, became involved with POP because her son Jack was into origami. She not only caught the folding bug herself, but found a wonderful way to combine origami and music to engage the 1-5 year-olds in her program. Using just one or two creases, she's able to weave story-songs that stimulate the imagination in a sweet and wondrous way.

Here are two links, performed by PLAY faculty member Angie Engelbart Solomon:

Road Trip
 
Camping Paper Story:

It's nice to be reminded that you don't have to go complex to find pleasure in a piece of paper.
Enjoy!

Videos are embedded below:

Storigami Time....

Anne Bedrick's teaching tale to deg farrelly's model has long been a favorite of mine. I hadn't told it in years, however, until last weekend, when I decided I wanted to include it in my Tarumpty Tum Tum transformation mechanism video. Should have rehearsed it first (my memory and delivery are not as polished as I once had it), but at least this should give you an idea of the power of the story and model. I flubbed the beginning when I said "snow begins to fall", instead of "snow begins to melt"; and I left out "...in the springtime, the flowers will begin to push up from the earth..."

Of course, I recite it in my own words, and did not memorize, verbatim, Anne Bedrick's story. The essence of it remains, but I think each storyteller should tell it in his own language, his own words that he feels comfortable with, and really "own it".