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July/August 2008: Paper Work |
Paper Work
Adirondack icons as original origami
Designs by John Szinger
www.zingman.com/origami
Though we think of Adirondack great camps as native north woods creations, Japanese influence appears here in graceful outbuildings, intricate roof lines and even interior décor, with painted paper fans adorning rustic walls or lanterns hanging from porch rafters. So origami, the centuries-old art of folding paper, is not alien to regional interior design. It's quite possible that a lakeside lodge displayed classic cranes or frogs on a mantel, and it's quite likely that those delicate souvenirs ended up as tiny colorful shreds in a winter mouse nest.
This ephemeral but labor-intensive art has fascinated John Szinger, 39, since he was a boy and "cootie catchers" were the playground rage in fortune-telling. Now a software designer and musician living in Westchester, New York, he is drawn to the way a simple leaf of paper can be transformed without glue or scissors into a bear, a chair, a butterfly, a rocket ship. When other artists doodle, Szinger creases. "With an animal, I think about pose and posture," he explains. "Then I experiment." Many designs shown here arise from traditional Japanese patterns, like the kite, a series of triangles. "One idea leads to another. From that bear—and I've encountered many in the Forest Preserve—I worked on an elephant."
The pieces are impressionistic, he continues. "Origami is like cartooning, making choices about what to emphasize, what to leave out," while still casting a recognizable form. Some of the North Country icons shown here came alive quickly, but others were challenging. Making the Adirondack chair sturdy, like a real piece of furniture, required many hours of experimenting. The loon, with its contrasting colors, dictated certain steps to show the white side of the black paper.
"In the past 15 years origami has really taken off," Szinger notes. There are national conventions, like Origami USA, held in Manhattan in June each year, and mathematicians, engineers, package designers and even safety experts study the complexities of folding for everything from air bag installation to launching a collapsible telescope into outer space. Szinger's output, though, is for the joy of the process. This selection is the first he has completed for publication in a mainstream magazine.
Many of the creatures shown here are difficult, requiring large paper. The canoe, however, can be made from a standard six-inch origami sheet, available in crafts shops.
—Elizabeth Folwell
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