At the Arts & Crafts Cooperative Inc. gallery this past Saturday, 10-year-old origami artist Max Berg explained the process of creating his on-display piece \u201cGentle Dragon.\u201d Berg\u2019s collection is made up of seven shrinking dragon figures \u2014 the smallest of which was folded from a 4 cm piece of Kami paper. He was the youngest person at the artist talk for \u201cArt in the Fold\u201d by more than a decade; his work is a starting point for understanding the challenges and patience of folding itself. The tiniest dragon stands still legible behind a line of much taller creatures; audiences can imagine the finger cramps.<\/p>\n
ACCI Gallery\u2019s current exhibit \u201cArt in the Fold\u201d isn\u2019t only interested in displaying the physical challenges of the act of folding. It wishes to explore what the process materially means to each artist. For curator Goran Konjevod, the prompt means a spin on his usual work: spectacularly folded paper in the shape of a vessel, preserved in encaustic wax. \u201cLandscape 2026-1\u201d is displayed on the wall in a simple square shape with Konjevod\u2019s familiar geometric, textured folds.<\/p>\n
A triptych by Ekaterina Pavlovic is stunning beyond possible comprehension of its artistic process. Incredibly swirled and divoted, perfect patterns are displayed in mesmerizing and glowing indigo. A silver sheen from the three works, whose materials are only listed as \u201cpaper, acrylic\u201d makes this incredible collection gleam like otherworldly metal. David Honda, too, creates a mesmerizing collection of netted, metallic orbs with cardstock and mixed media. A creative starting point is unimaginable to anyone who witnesses the intricacy of these pieces.<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley art practice student Jasper Wang renders a shadowy, stretching blend of black and white body parts, patterns and fabrics in \u201cThey Knew Something I Refused to Believe.\u201d Strangeness is woven with symbols of history; bodily confusion grasps onto strange bars. Physical folding \u2014 within human tangibility \u2014 is drawn in mesmerizing pen strokes. Opposite this display wall, Chris Conrad depicts the \u201cliving memory\u201d of paper creases with \u201cImposter Syndrome,\u201d a scene sculpted from a single sheet of paper. This sheet has skillfully been crumpled into a human figure at a desk: with head in hands, a T-shirt on and left leg outstretched. This self doubting figure ought to look up and see their deserved place in such good artistic company.<\/p>\n
\u201cOld Soul\u201d makes for an incredible material examination: a human face is rendered out of quilled paper and beads. Placed in the center of thin, rolled strips of paper, gold and silver dots create pupils and ornament an upward-staring face. Curling orange and cream hair blooms from the scalp of this stacked collection of paper strips. Kathy Canfield Shepard works within the inherently mesmerizing art of paper quilling \u2014 but makes its representational qualities ever-more magnificent.<\/p>\n
Gabriella O\u2019Connor displays a grid of origami lilies, working from one slitted sheet of paper and taking inspiration from Renzuru, a style of origami that links paper cranes carved from the same sheet. Individual lilies are pinned down with a decorative pearly bead inside each flower \u2014 repetition and connection become both wholly impressive craft and one peaceful, detailed display.<\/p>\n
Folding brings dimension. For metal artist Ema Tanigaki, four copper sculptures which once started as simple sheets were, indeed, \u201cfolded\u201d to get to their current state \u2014 but not with the same ease as Kami paper. Boasting dimensionality, curves and empty space, these pieces \u201cperform a silent dance\u201d and possess confidence in tandem. Their hand-defeating sturdiness and physics-defying cylindricality obscure a labor-intensive process \u2014 but never erase it.<\/p>\n
The simple awe of folded artwork is the physical effort that is required to go into it. Paintbrushes cannot help in rendering blushed cheeks; a camera lens is unavailable to zoom in. Just as human hands are needed to craft folds, so are human eyes needed to appreciate them.<\/p>\n
Konjevod, a master of the fold himself, has procured an exhibition whose exceptional talent is only visible from within ACCI Gallery\u2019s walls.<\/p>\n
\u201cArt in the Fold\u201d will be up until March 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the Arts & Crafts Cooperative Inc. gallery this past Saturday, 10-year-old origami artist Max Berg explained the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26249,98636,98641,98644,98637,98640,98639,26253,98642,98638,98643,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-215023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-acci-gallery","tag-art-in-the-fold","tag-chris-conrad","tag-david-honda","tag-ekaterina-pavlovic","tag-ema-tanigaki","tag-gabriella-oconnor","tag-goran-konjevod","tag-jasper-wang","tag-kathy-canfield-shepard","tag-max-berg","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}