Special Guests
Pei Haozheng
Pei Haozheng is a Chinese contemporary artist, designer, and researcher, exploring origami for about 20 years. As an artist, he has created many meaningful works, combining sophisticated techniques with humanitarian ideals. His works, for instance, were certified by the Guinness World Records twice and sold at several charity auctions, including the 2023 Yao Foundation Auction and the 2023 Make A Wish Auction, to raise money for disadvantaged children, and exhibited at various museums, outreach events, and symposiums, such as the Nanjing Massacre Museum, the 2022 Boao Youth Conference, and the 2023 International Symposium on Structures and Materials Inspired by Origami. As a designer, he has applied folding techniques to design. For example, he received the 2023 Best Mascot Award from China National Stadium, incorporating folding elements in mascot design. He has also designed several origami-themed TV projects, promoting the art form to a growing audience. As a researcher, he sees origami as a medium that intersects both art and science, which has led to numerous lectures at and collaborations with universities nationwide. He is co-developing an origami-inspired robot with Peking University and curating a Scienceart exhibition of origami. More information is on his wiki page, https://www.wikiwand.com/simple/Pei_Haozheng.
Francesco Mancini
Francesco was born and raised in Tavenna, a small town in the south of Italy, in 1974. He discovered origami about twenty years ago when his best friend showed him Sam Randlett's flapping bird. He already knew some traditional models but that one rekindled his curiosity and gave him the impulse to deepen the knowledge and the possibilities of this art. At the beginning he was a lone folder, then he joined the Centro Diffusione Origami, he began to attend a folding group, and went to the first Italian conventions. Now he is vice president of the CDO, and he is part of the editorial team of Quadrato Magico. Due to a design competition, he started focusing on designing original models. Since he loves geometry his designs are mostly geometric and modular but he also likes action, festive, and simple origami. His diagrams have been published in numerous convention books and origami magazines around the world and has been invited as a special guest in Israel, France, and Germany. In addition to folding, he likes to teach origami and is lucky to be able to do it often, especially with children, in Florence, where he lives now, thanks to his collaboration with the Garden of Archimedes, a Museum of Mathematics where origami is used as a tool for a better and more fun understanding of mathematics.
Featured Guests
Leyla Torres
https://www.origamispirit.com/
Leyla has practiced origami since 1988, helping people master paper folding skills and creativity through easy to follow tutorials, techniques, and community on her website OrigamiSpirit.com. She founded the online membership Origamigos as well and has led workshops in the United States, Europe, and South America. Leyla’s origami creations have been shown at origami conventions and museums such as Mujeres de Papel et Escuela Museo Origami Zaragoza, Spain. She has been a special guest at Origami Mexico, the Pacific Coast Origami Convention, and Origami Deutschland. In 2022, she received the Teaching Award from Origami USA. Born in Bogota, Colombia, Leyla now resides in Arlington, VT with her husband, John Sutton, and their cat, Coco.
Marc Kirschenbaum
Marc Kirschenbaum has over fifty years of origami experience. He has developed hundreds of models on a large variety of subjects and has published numerous books showcasing these pieces. Marc is active in OrigamiUSA, in both capacities as a Director and Chair of the Publications Committee.
Boice Wong
Boice is an origami artist from Portland known online by his handle, OrigamiByBoice. He enjoys folding and designing models that represent or render forms such as humanoids and dragons. A goal in his folding is to trick people into thinking the fold is not just a single square.
Boice is an International Origami Internet Olympiad (IOIO) Silver medalist and 2023 first place winner of the Joisel prize in the figurative category. He continues his interest in competitive origami by hosting bi-monthly competitions on his website. Boice also makes YouTube tutorials where he seeks to make complex topics, like learning crease patterns, much less intimidating. Boice helps lead the YouTube community in showing proper permission and crediting standard
Gerardo G.
Gerardo (family names “Gacharná Ramirez”) was invited as the 2023 Florence Temko award recipient. From Colombia, he has helped link the origami community through a creators’ blog and a fanzine, and, currently, the UnFold gatherings and Foldeas sessions with guest speakers. He is currently working on a PhD thesis on origami and social science. His wife Nataly will accompany him; she’s a creator, too!
In his convention classes, Gerardo will share a couple of his uncommon practical models, some design notes, and an origami challenge. He will also offer a talk on conceptual origami. Participate in this year’s ATC swap and exchange cards with him!
Gerardo’s goal/dream: to be a special guest at foreign in-person conventions!
Joel Stern
Joel has been deeply involved in origami since childhood—as a practitioner, creator, author, and teacher. He’s published more than ten origami books and kits, including Jewish Holiday Origami. He’s held countless workshops in galleries, libraries, bookstores, corporate settings, schools, and camps; he engages participants by means of storytelling, demonstrations, puzzles, and games. He hosts online gatherings with folders from around the world. His works have appeared in movies, TV shows and commercials, and print ads. He writes and designs pop-up books, with two titles recently published by Simon & Schuster — In the Holly Jolly North Pole and In a Spooky Haunted House. A longtime active member of OUSA, he chaired the 2017 PCOC convention.
Christiane Bettens aka Melisande
My hometown is in western Switzerland, 35 miles from Geneva.
I started origami in 2003, when my 6-year old son asked if I could fold anything other than the fortune teller: I was able to remember the hat, that's all. I searched the internet, found some models for my son and went on folding for my own pleasure.
Inspiration comes from my environment: images in a book, fabric quilts, a flower in my garden, a church pavement. Each time I learn to fold someone's else model, I try to find a variation, to transpose the idea onto another paper format. My designing technique is hands-on, trial and error, no computer calculations.
I like to share my models through diagrams in origami magazines and teaching at conventions.
Nobuko Okabe
Nobuko Okabe has been teaching origami for more than 20 years in local schools and libraries in New Jersey and other cities in the US and abroad. She started designing her own models about 10 years ago and some of her models are internationally known. She also published a book, “Modular Origami with Super Nobu Unit”, with the recommendation of Tomoko Fuse. She was born and grew up in Tokyo, Japan, is fluent in Japanese and has helped others read Japanese materials as well as an interpreter. She is currently working to help with the historical Japanese part of the Origami Heaven website by David Mitchell of the BOS. Nobuko is an avid tennis player, too, and has been helping local tennis groups for years.
Rona Gurkewitz
HTTPS://www.make-origami.com/BennettArnstein/home.php
Rona Gurkewitz was introduced to origami by Lillian Oppenheimer and Laura Kruskal over fifty years ago. She has invented original designs as well as ways of explaining modular models. She is the author of four published books, with co-author Bennett Arnstein and has given talks and workshops at conferences in the USA, the United Kingdom and Japan. Some of her designs are in the Mingei International Museum's permanent collection. She has also served on the first Board of Origami USA. Now she teaches Math and Origami to elementary school children and is writing books.
Tung Ken Lam
Tung Ken is an origami creator, author and qualified teacher. His modular creations including WXYZ and Jitterbug are known around the world as fine examples of original and economical folding.
His books are available from The Source: Action Modular Origami (Tarquin, 2018), Star Origami (AK Peters / CRC Press, 2021), Origami: From Surface to Form (Wooden Books, 2022), Modular Origami (Schiffer Books, 2023) and Learning Mathematics with Origami (coauthor, Association of Teachers of Mathematics, 2016).
Tung Ken has been folding paper since childhood. He makes all kinds of origami but favors geometric subjects as “realism” is not the main focus of geometric work: the focus is on the folding sequence, efficiency, effectiveness and elegance.
Chris Conrad
Chris Conrad is an artist with over 14 years of experience folding origami. His original work pushes the limits of the medium, creating unique and complex pieces which take months of planning and thousands of folds to complete. He draws inspiration from high fantasy, medieval history, pop culture, and the world around him, typically focusing on creating expressive human figure designs. Chris was awarded a Certificate of Artistic Achievement from the Luxembourg Art Prize in 2022 and has also won a Joisel Award, the highest artistic honor in origami.
Richard Ellison
Richard began folding origami as a seven-year-old when a family friend loaned him Harbin’s “Secrets of Origami”. He got stuck frequently, cried a lot, and his parents were unable to help very much. His enjoyment of origami has lasted into adulthood. He decided to have a go at designing original works in 2020. The result was a small collection of animal designs, available as an e-book at The Source. Through membership in OrigamiUSA, he helped start an online club, the North Atlanta Origami Group, and has continued to design and teach. Representational origami from a single sheet is his favorite genre. He is a practicing architect in Atlanta, Georgia. He and his wife, Heather, have three school-aged children.
Sy Chen
HTTP://freedom.brinkster.net/Sy/
Sy Chen has been folding for more than 40 years. His origami inspiration comes from everywhere. He prefers simple and elegant designs that use clever color-changing or folded lines to capture the subject's essence. In 2023, his origami tiling of the newly discovered einstein hat shape led to his placement as a finalist for the Einstein Mad Hat Award, hosted by the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust and the National Museum of Mathematics. He has published three origami books: Green Origami Gifts, Folding Hearts, and Origami Greetings. He currently lives in Rockville, Maryland with his wife. He is an active member of the Capital Region Origami Crew, a group that folds near Washington, D.C.
Philip Chapman-Bell
Philip Chapman-Bell, also know as oschene, is an origami designer, living in western Massachusetts. He has been folding since he was eight and discovered the Randlett books at a local library. He finds creative space in the areas not fully explored by other folders, such as circular paper, cylinders, cones and other curved surfaces. While admiring colleagues' aspirations to fine art, he believes origami is a people's art and finds more beauty in the casual sharing of models than in a gallery. Philip's pursuit of origami has led to many adventures, the strangest so far being a trip to Sweden, to work with an industrial design team on re-imagining the bottom of a milk carton. He has no doubt, stranger adventures are still to come.
Brian Chan
Brian Chan has been designing origami since 2004 and folding origami since before 1990. His focus on is mainly complex representational work, although he does occasionally experiment with simpler, more abstract forms. One of his most well-known pieces is the Attack of the Kraken, which features a squid-like sea monster attacking a sailing ship, all folded from the same uncut square of paper. Brian has been invited to a number of conventions including JOAS (Japan), AEP (Spain), and Origami Cusco (Peru), to name a few.