Saturday, August 18, 2007

Opening



Recovering slowly from the opening of the Tikotin show... According to the Museum’s final count, 594 people packed themselves into the exhibition halls in the two hours of the opening on mid-day Friday; I’m told they haven’t seen such crowds in many years.

All of this initial success can be credited neither to the quality of the show (which no one knew about beforehand) nor to the publicity (which was pretty slight). Rather there must be a great pent-up curiosity in the public about origami. Now however that the exhibit's been seen I expect the numbers only to climb as word of mouth spreads.

The dignitaries came too, of course, and warmly congratulated each other. I was moved however to hear Tikotin's daughter Ilana tell about that funny little man, Yoshizawa, who would come to their home in Japan, and who would never stop folding.


The night before the opening I went round & counted how many discrete objects there were (a herd of horses counts as six objects, a work of modular origami as one). My total came to 162. The number of “installations” or “sensible groupings” (a herd is one object, a pair of birds another)--which is more subjective--varies between 60 and 100.

Here is a very modest sampling. Click on the images for a higher-res view.

Saadya


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"Treasures of Origami Art", works by 25 world-leading origami artists, showing now through the end of the year at the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, 89 Hanassi Avenue, Haifa, Israel. Please call the Museum for hours: 04-838-3554.
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Robert Lang's Cervids



Linda Mihara's Connected Crane Quilt



Yoshizawa main table


Yoshizawa Swan family


Top: Giang Dinh's fine wet-folded series, "The Dance". Below it is Yoshizawa's Elephant, one of the works that was in the original 1955 Amsterdam exhibit arranged with the help of Felix Tikotin.



Ron Koh Goldfish


Tomoko Fuse Tessellations


Fuse Modulars folded by Fuse acolyte Rosana Shapiro



Ray Schamp's "Corrugations" wall


Tomohiro Tachi's Teapot


A tessellations table (one of three featuring Eric Gjerde, Christine Edison, Christiane Bettens and Joel Cooper)


Old Goat


LaFosse Butterfly


Some things of my own