about.
I’m Kevin and welcome to my origami world and my lifelong passion! I’ve been making origami since I was 7 after discovering origami-making on YouTube along with the numerous origami books that my parents bought me. I began with simple designs starting with the paper crane but quickly became involved with more complicated sculptures like dragons and creatures.
Origami is a great hobby as people of all ages can fold and create exciting sculptures. Origami is a pastime to be enjoyed as a recreational art form but also possess deep mathematical properties that engineers study and invent new innovative structures deployed to solve many technology problems. I hope my website provides a brief introduction to origami and motivate you to try it yourself.
community.
Origami is a generational pastime that unite young and old to share in the passion of creating art out of a simple piece of square paper. I’ve extended my passion by teaching origami to senior citizens at a local senior center. While many of the folks that I met are aware of what origami is, most have never tried to make origami beyond the simple structures like the paper crane. Origami energized these folks by reenabling them to have cognitive concentration and mental alertness in performing complex paper folding, improve their finger dexterity in the delicate folds and feeling like a young child again making something that they didn’t think was possible. I derived so much pleasure teaching these older adults paper folding and watching their faces lit up with excitement as they created a frog and other playful creatures. It’s a great opportunity for me to teach these seniors but also invaluable for me to learn from their experiences and their personal stories as we make origami together.
application.
folklore
Young kids are often introduced to origami beginning with the paper cane. There’s a folklore history behind the crane. Cranes are considered mystical creatures that can live for a thousand years, according to Japanese legend. It’s believed that anyone who folds one thousand cranes will be granted one wish by the gods. This legend was popularized through the story of a Japanese girl who was exposed to radiation from the Hiroshima atomic bomb during World War II. Sadako Sasaki, at age 2, developed leukemia and spent most of her time in a hospital. Upon her learning the story of legendary cranes, at age 12, she began folding origami cranes. Tragically, she folded only 644 cranes as she became too weak to fold further and fell short of her goal of one thousand. In her memory, her classmates took up the task to fold the remaining number of cranes and actually surpass her goal of 1,000 by completing about 1,400 paper cranes. At many children’s hospitals, colorful paper cranes are often given to the sick as a symbol of good wishes for a speedy recovery. There are organizations filled with volunteers that fold origami and donate them to children’s hospitals worldwide.
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science
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Origami is an art form that began in Japan many centuries ago. Older still is how nature has utilized origami in compacting structured, like insect wings folded in a small size, which only scientists has recently discovered and studied during the past few decades. These scientific understandings has been applied to space engineering, robotics, biomolecular DNA structures and other fields only recently in the late 20th to early 21st centuries. My personal research project was on origami-inspired solar panels used in space station applications. I plan to study mechanical engineering in college and apply the science of origami to solve real-world problems.
You can read about my origami research paper here.
art exhibition
There is an organization called OrigamiUSA that host origami conventions and an Origami by Children annual international competition that selects winning origami designs. The finest submitted works are organized as an exhibit and showcased throughout the continental US. I was fortunate to have been selected for two years in a row, in 2022 and 2023, which further my interest to continue this art form and explore the science of origami.
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therapeutic
When working with senior citizens, I’ve discovered that origami can serve as a therapeutic practice to improve mental and physical well-being. Research has shown that origami can help people recover from hand injuries, improve fine motor control as well as provide mental calmness for people suffering from ADHD, anxiety, autism and depression. It can help seniors to strengthen their hand-eye coordination and mental focus. Origami can keep the mind sharp by focusing on creating shapes with simple folds, improve spatial skills and imagination. It can serve as a form of physical therapy, especially those with arthritis, to improve joint mobility and flexibility. Finally, origami provides a sense of accomplishment with a finished sculpture, the reward for persistence and patience. All is needed is a square piece of paper.
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social pastime
My passion for origami inspired me to start a high school club where I taught how to make interesting origami sculptures to fellow students and friends. It involves concentration and detail that also helped relieves stress and provide a diversion from the intensive studying that students face daily during the school year. Origami allows us to gather together, learn from each other, have fun with each other and at the end of the club meeting, create an origami piece to take home and be a conversation piece with friends and families.