Hats
a children’s book, a gallery show, and a museum exhibition
The hats started when acclaimed pop-up book artist Sam Ita (look him up at your earliest convenience) asked me to co-author a book of children's cut-and-fold paper hats. I've been included in various books but this was my first time co-authoring... in two languages I don't speak!
We included some fascinators and other styles of headpieces in our book. I am better at folding than I am at modeling.
A local gallery in Long Island City, Queens, asked Sam and his collaborators to do a show so I made these hats and headpieces based on the ones in our book. My photographer friend Terry Collins made this cool nonaptych and taught me the word nonaptych.
The Science Museum of Oklahoma wrote to me asking to include some of my work in an upcoming origami exhibition. The curator had heard I'd done some fashion-related origami and thought my hats would be a great inclusion. Unfortunately I hadn't kept the hat assortment because I lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn. Naively I decided to redesign them all to be more museum worthy.
I was proud to have a whole wall section at the museum in addition to some of my jewelry and accessories. I took a 12 hour road trip to see them in Oklahoma while I was visiting my parents in Houston. The lighting made them difficult to photograph.
I was especially fond of this one. The whole piece including the sliced flower is folded from one long rectangle of watercolor paper.
A rule of design is that you never know what people will like. This was a crowd favorite although I considered it quite basic technically.
Pillbox hat with flowers.
Pillbox hat with curved folding.
My blurb at the Science Museum Oklahoma. My mom isn't sure if I started origami at 5 or 6 but I definitely went hard by 9 years old and loved coloring my paper before folding it.
"Into the Fold" press video from NewsOK