The OrigamiUSA Annual Convention for 2010 was held at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, June 25-28, 2010.

The complete convention experience includes:

  • Survival Kit with tote bag full of origami paper and other goodies
  • OrigamiUSA 2010 Origami Collection (book of diagrams)
  • OrigamiUSA 2010 T-shirt
  • Friday Open House
  • Saturday & Sunday classes
  • Sunday evening Oversize Folding Event
  • Monday classes and presentations
  • Monday night dinner

Special Guest

Our special guest this year will be Roman Diaz from Uruguay, who is a relatively recent addition to the list of top creators of exciting and challenging designs. He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1968, and lived in Argentina, Honduras and Mozambique in his childhood. He returned to Uruguay to complete his studies, and became a veterinarian. During his travels he occasionally experimented with traditional origami in the simple books that he found.

It wasn't until a European vacation in 1997 that he found a sophisticated modern origami book – "Origami Sea Life" by Robert Lang and John Montroll – and became hooked immediately. He was fascinated by the possibilities of what he saw, but had no way to get more origami books. "I had no other option but to start designing my own things," he wrote. "I based my first designs on the techniques I could learn from the only origami book I had. Pretty soon after that I had access to the Internet which opened a whole new origami world to me. Back then there were not that many diagrams, but I was more interested in the photos of other people's designs."

By 2005 his diagrams and images of his designs were starting to attract attention. Since then he has been a special guest at origami conventions in Spain, France, Italy, Germany and Chile, and he's published two books, the most recent a collaboration with Nicolas Terry that includes models he designed and created during four years in Calgary, Canada.

Roman is a charming and articulate man with accessible teaching skills. We know that our members will enjoy meeting him and learning more about his work.