Into the fold: Origami Now! at Peabody Essex Museum
Do you think origami is just folding paper into pretty little cranes?
Then step beneath the 12-foot butterflies fluttering above the Art & Nature Center at the Peabody Essex Museum and prepare to be astonished.
A pinkish pig named Wilbur lifts his snout as if sniffing for dinner.
Perched on spindly legs, a pea green katydid searches the ground with long, thin antennae. A giant squid rises from the sea to wrap a three-masted ship in its tentacles.
Yes, they're all made from single sheets of paper, folded without cutting or gluing into impossibly complex figures that boggle the imagination.
Welcome to "Origami Now!," a fun and fantastic exhibit that reveals how the world's foremost practitioners have transformed an ancient Asian art into a contemporary art form that brings together design, music, math, meditation and cutting edge technology in utterly new ways.
"Origami is in the most exciting phase of growth and change in its history," said nature center director Jane Winchell. "The exhibition offers visitors a rare opportunity to experience this highly creative and innovative art form."
Winchell organized the show with Michael LaFosse, one of the nation's preeminent origami masters, serving as exhibition adviser.
Running through June 8, the exhibit features 60 works by 24 of the world's best origami artists, including several from England, France, Israel, Japan and Canada.
It includes several interactive stations where visitors of all ages can make origami and a 13-minute video in which five artists describe their individual styles.
While origami is a Japanese word simply meaning "folding paper," LaFosse said historians believe it began nearly 2,000 years ago in China where paper was invented.
He credits Japanese master Akira Yoshizawa, whom he calls his inspiration, for "inventing the new origami" and making it into a contemporary art form.
Growing up in Fitchburg, LaFosse first learned of Yoshizawa nearly 40 years ago when reading an article he wrote for Readers Digest. LaFosse was a 12-year-old staying home sick from school, and the encounter shaped his life and art.
"Back then when no one was teaching it, I just poured myself into origami. I asked myself, how would I fold paper to make a squirrel," he said. "Origami is really a self-taught investigation. After years and years, I can make paper come alive."
He and Richard Alexander founded the Origamido Studio in Haverhill, where they have taught for 11 years. They have authored several books and videos.
Alexander described origami as "the whole transformation of two dimensions (of a piece of paper) into three dimensions."
"It's everything. It can be exasperating, mentally challenging and creative. It can be the best meditation you'll get," he said. "It's definitely a performance art."
Alexander, whose speciality is making paper from a species of banana called abaca, said the PEM show is the longest running exhibit of its kind with the "highest degree of interactivity" for visitors to learn about origami in a hands-on way.
For LaFosse, origami is an art "that uses both the left and right sides of the brain." At its highest level, he believes it fuses aspects of music, architecture, mathematics, martial arts, engineering and an intuitive element he called "the touch of the artist."
"Origami is, by and large, metamorphic. It doesn't add or take away from its original material. It changes its shape like music and architecture. For that reason it's not mystical. It's logical. I call it the da Vinci art. It would've suited Leonardo just fine."
Recalling Yoshizawa's philosophy, LaFosse speaks of origami as a unique activity that seems to merge aspects of taxidermy and metaphysics. Initially much origami involved creating animals and objects from nature. "Master Yoshizawa said the paper is the skin and the folds are the bones. When I read that I understood each animal requires a special skeleton that suits it," he said. "When I fold paper to represent an animal, I want the paper to be wrapped beautifully around the spirit of the animal."
While including works made since 1960, most pieces in the show were made over the last decades, reflecting huge advances by contemporary artists in form and technique.
For anyone who has ever folded a paper airplane, these objects will blast virtually every preconception you ever had about origami.
As if to prove a point, butterflies ranging from 12 inches to 12 feet, made by LaFosse and Alexander, guide visitors through the Atrium to the exhibition gallery.
The initial reaction of many visitors was head-shaking wonderment.
How could Paul Jackson of Israel turn hand-colored paper into a 15-point shape that might have been the most gorgeous sand dollar ever coughed up by the ocean.
If that's not puzzling enough, how could Brian Chan, an MIT graduate student, turn a 50-inch paper square into a sea monster that belongs in "Pirates of the Caribbean" without cutting, tearing or gluing. Wall text explains Chan's imaginary "Kraken" took "two weeks to design and three days to fold."
A visitor looked at Nathan Geller's "Saw Fish" with matching rows of six spikes protruding from its bony snout and insisted it "just wasn't possible" to create such a peculiar shape from a single sheet of paper.
Recognized as an international luminary, Frenchman Eric Joisel is showing a bizarre "Self Made Man" who appears to be giving birth to himself from a sheet of paper.
Asked how visitors new to origami can appreciate such a little-known art, LaFosse answered without hesitation: "Just be joyful."
"Drink it in. There might be some confusion you can't sort out on your first visit," he said. "Look more closely at the style differences. Look for the way people handle paper. Some fold it geometrically. Some fold it lyrically like a singer shaping a line. Take pleasure in everything you see."
To learn more about Origamido Studio, where Michael LaFosse and Richard Alexander give lessons, or to order their books and videos, call 978-372-1215, visit www.origamido.com or e-mail info@origamido.com. Visits are by appointment only.