O PAPER!
Paper and I go way back - at least to the First Grade (1956/7), back when I got a spanking virtually every day for stealing - paper of all things! Tipped off by my teacher that I was stealing from the supply closet at school, my Mother dutifully emptied my "book bag" as soon as I got home from school each day, confirmed my thieving, and would then then tell me that I'd be getting a spanking later when my Father got home from work.
My loot was always the same: new black and white marble notebooks, and sometimes a box of new crayons and some pencils. Clueless about why taking what I wanted was wrong, I obstinately continued my life of crime until the Second Grade when I learned about the Ten Commandments, heaven and hell! So there it is: I have always had a thing for paper!
Married in 1980, when we started homeschoooling our children I eventually introduced the children to origami. While the kids loved folding cranes and flowers, I preferred using paper to create my own entirely abstract shapes Decades later (2012), I happened to watch a magical documentary called "Between the Folds," The segment in this documentary about single fold origami was life changing for me. It was at this point that I started using 300lb Arches coldpress watercolor paper for all my paperfolds.
Though I have now been paperfolding for 8 years, in many ways I feel like I just figured out what I am doing this past May (2020) when I created a group of paperfolds that hit me with enough force to get my total attention. Up until that point I had only done one paperfold every couple of months - usually they ended up as cards. No more!
I think so highly of my current paperfolds (aka paper sculptures) that I don't write on them at all any more. I also don't refer to them as cards. My thinking is that I am making art, not cards! In fact, in my mind all my paperfolds are 8' tall sculptures!
Something else that's different about the paperfolds I am doing now is that instead of being entirely spontaneous creations which I finish in less than a minute or two, my current paperfolds sometimes take me 20 minutes or more to conceptualize and create.
More changes: I have given myself liberty to do some cutting and augmenting, that is adding additional shapes to a fold - formerly a total no-no - and have even begun to add graphic elements (with markers) which emphasize shape and add a new level of power.
The point I'm trying to make is that instead of simply folding paper as I have done for years, I am now investigating/experimenting with a constantly growing number of concepts.
My paperfolds today have developed way beyond just being interesting and novel and become clear, concise experiences/ expressions of my inner spirit, my interior life. I have always looked at my paintings this way but for a long time I simply saw paperfolding as fun.
While I still like the famous Albert Einstein quote about creativity being intelligence having fun, I now like to say that, at least for me, creativity is about completing myself, finishing the creation of my humanity - not just finding my soul, my deepest foundations, but naming and understandings them. O the wonder!
