These are the presenters for FoldFest Spring 2021.
Paul Jackson
Paul Jackson has been a professional paper artist, paper engineer, writer and teacher since 1983, specializing in origami and the folded arts. He has written more than 40 books including origami books for adults and children. His more recent books have applied folding techniques to design, a subject he has taught in more than 80 Universities and Colleges in 13 countries. He was one of the pioneers of folding/origami as Fine Art and has exhibited his folded artworks in many galleries and museums. He has also curated several ground-breaking exhibitions of origami, undertaken many commercial commissions for print, screen-based media, festivals and more. In 2000, he married the Israeli origami artist and educator, Miri Golan.
Robby Kraft
Robby loves folding origami, writing code, and especially writing code about origami. He has been folding since he was a child, recently started designing, and engages with all styles of origami. Robby works as a coder and a teacher in New York City but prefers to be called a student.
Janessa Munt
Janessa Munt has been folding for over 15 years, with hundreds of designs to her name. She has authored four books, "The Dollar Bill Origami Book: 30 Designs That Turn Money into Art", two of "Pokémon Origami", and "Harry Potter Origami". Janessa's models have appeared in advertising and museum exhibits around the world. Additionally, her work has been featured in several convention books, including the annual 2015 Origami Collection by OrigamiUSA.
Miri Golan
Miri founded the Israeli Origami Center (IOC) in 1993. The IOC holds regular international conventions, holds local meetings, regularly stages exhibitions and festivals, and has also published a series of Hebrew-language books. In 2018, her e-Learning "Origametria" program was accepted into the National Curriculum for Mathematics by the Israeli Ministry of Education. It is studied weekly in 600+ schools. Miri is also an established origami artist, creating large-scale works that discuss issues pertinent to her region and her gender. She is married to the origami artist Paul Jackson.
Goran Konjevod
Goran has been folding paper for a long time, and has been creating original pieces since 2005. He grew up in Croatia, but has been living in the US since 1995. His background and day job is in mathematics and computer science. Most of his folding uses sequences of pleats, whose interaction generates tension in the folded sheet and creates curvature. In addition, the paper used for the pleats can be pressed flat, or opened up and stretched, making the paper sheet a sculptural medium. Besides paper Goran has worked with sheet metal, wire mesh and other sheet materials. He has exhibited his work in both origami-specific and more general art contexts.
Sipho Mabona
Sipho Mabona is a Swiss / South African artist mostly focusing on folding naturally-dyed canvas into fragments of crease-patterns; but still finds some time every now and then to do some representational origami.
Erik Demaine
Erik Demaine is a Professor in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Demaine's research interests range throughout algorithms: from data structures for improving web searches, to the geometry of understanding how proteins fold, to the computational difficulty of playing games. He appears in the origami documentaries Between the Folds and NOVA's The Origami Revolution, and co-wrote a book about the theory of folding (Geometric Folding Algorithms). Together with his father Martin, his interests span the connections between mathematics and art, including curved-crease sculptures in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Renwick Gallery in the Smithsonian.
Klara Mundilova
Klara is passionate about the geometry of curved crease origami and develops software to design such foldings. She has a MSc in mathematics and is currently a PhD student in computer science at MIT.
Jeannine Mosely
Jeannine is well-known for her origami models created out of business cards, especially some very large models created from tens of thousands of units. In 1995 she launched a project to construct a level-3 approximation to the fractal known as the Menger Sponge, using connected cubes made from business cards. The project was finished in 2005. It incorporated 66,048 cards folded and assembled by Mosely and about 200 volunteers. Jeannine has also designed many other geometric and modular origami designs. These include a number of curved models such as her "Orb", “Bud”, and a curved tessellation "Sails".
Rebecca Gieseking
Rebecca Gieseking has been designing origami bowls and vases since 2011. She currently works as a chemistry professor, and is also trained as an artist. Her designs combine precise engineering of impossible-looking shapes with artistic qualities, and the interplay of sharp lines and planes with flowing curves reflects her dual interests in art and science.
Robert J. Lang
Robert has been folding a long time, bouncing back and forth between origami art, science, math, and technology. He's written a bunch of books and technical papers and displayed his art in various places, but Robert gets the greatest satisfaction when he hears that something he's folded, taught, or published has helped someone else reach one of their own origami goals.
David Illescas
David is a young origami designer, originally from Ecuador. Currently 22 years old, he studies architecture and interior design. David has been folding for 13 years and designing for 7. Besides origami, he is also passionate about drawing and literature. Two years ago, David began the project of making his own origami book, which talks about how to design using logic and intuition. Up to now, he has published in convention collections from Japan, USA, Colombia, and the Czech Republic. David loves how origami opens many doors and introduces him to many endearing people, for which he will always be infinitely grateful.
Ekaterina Lukasheva
Ekaterina Lukasheva has a passion for mathematics and art, and the convergence of these two passions has given birth to her intricately folded paper art. Ekaterina was born in Moscow, Russia, she was inspired as a child. Being a child she was fascinated by the worlds of architecture, art, mathematical games, and puzzles. She went on to receive an MSc in mathematics and computer science, and a PhD in mathematics, giving her strong mathematical background that allows her to feel the geometry of origami intuitively. She currently resides in Santa Clara, CA with her husband and two cats. ;)
Tomohiro Tachi
https://origami.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Tomohiro Tachi is an associate professor in Graphic and Computer Sciences at the University of Tokyo. He studied architecture and received his Ph.D. degree in Engineering from the University of Tokyo. He has been designing origami since 2002 and keeps exploring three-dimensional and kinematic origami through computation. He has developed origami software tools including "rigid origami simulator", "origamizer", and "freeform origami", which are all available from his website. His research interests include origami, structural morphology, computational design, and fabrication.
Satoshi Kamiya
Born on June 6, 1981 in Nagoya, Japan, Satoshi Kamiya began folding paper as a young child. He has been folding ever since, without any period without folding. In 1993, Kamiya joined Origami Tanteidan (currently JOAS), and, inspired by the super-complex models he saw there, he started designing his own origami models. In 1999, Kamiya won his first championship in the 3rd Origami Tournament on a TV program called "TV Champion", and he has won five championships in a row since then. In 2000, Kamiya went abroad to study origami around the world for two years, meeting various creators and folders. Currently, Kamiya continues to design models, always searching for extensions to the art of origami.
Jun Maekawa
http://origami.asablo.jp/blog/
Jun Maekawa was born in Tokyo in 1958. He has been a pioneer in representational origami for many years, and has authored many influential origami books, including "Viva! Origami" (1983), "Genuine Origami" (2006), and "Genuine Japanese Origami" (2012). Maekawa currently serves on the board of the Japan Origami Academic Society.
Tae-yong Yoo
Born in 1996, Tae-yong has been doing origami since he was young, and has been involved in various origami activities, such as publishing and exhibition, as a member of the Korean Origami Association. Currently, Tae-yong is working as a graphic designer and tries to incorporate origami into his design work.
Hoang Tien Quyet
Hoang Tien Quyet was born in 1988 in Vinh Phuc, Vietnam.
He enjoys working with new and fresh ideas, and always tries to breathe life and his own personality into his models. Much of his work uses wet-folding and shaping to bring his models to life.
Maria Sinayskaya
Maria Sinayskaya is an origami artist who is mostly known for her modular origami designs: kusudamas and stars. Born and raised in Russia, she now resides in Durban, South Africa. Maria published her first book, "Zen Origami", in 2016 and is currently working on a second one: a collection of modular origami stars, due to be released in 2021.
Enrique Martinez
Enrique Martinez's origami has been like a cat's life in reverse: he's been born 4 times, 3 to go. The 1st life was traditional: hats, boats, frogs and airplanes. The 2nd was intriguing: his grandfather folded an elephant, but refused to teach his. The 3rd was social: some John Montroll books sparked the flame, just before he learned of the Spanish origami association. The 4th was the start of his true origami self: OAS (Origami Always Succeed [sic]) with Joel, Oriol, and Marc. Now origami is his happy place. Enrique mostly folds animals, always from one square piece of paper.
Mark Bolitho
Mark Bolitho is a world renowned origami artist. Since 2004, he has worked full-time as an origami designer. He has worked with a variety of clients to produce bespoke origami designs to meet artistic briefs. Clients include advertising and design companies, event companies, publishers and academic institutions. Projects have included television and print advertisements, websites, newspaper articles and direct marketing campaigns. Mark has taken his origami around the world, and has held workshops in countries including France, China, Germany, Switzerland, Korea, Serbia, and Dubai. In 2017 he was the invited guest for the JOAS origami society convention in Tokyo. Mark is a long standing member of the British Origami Society.