Finger Painting Ocean Waves || Time Lapse || Oil Painting

You're listening to an airwave media podcast Welcome to who arted weekly art history for all ages. I'm your host Kyle would now before I get started today I just want to say a big thank you to all of you who have helped the show grow By leaving ratings and reviews or telling others about the show I just got an email saying that feed spot calm has included who arted on their list of best podcasts for the classroom and It obviously feels really good when people notice and appreciate my work. So again, thank you Since I know a lot of my listeners are fellow teachers I will link feed spot in the show notes if you want to see what other podcasts they recommend for your classroom Now for today's episode. I want to focus on origami Origami is the Japanese art of folded paper sculpture. It's a tradition That's basically as old as paper in the 6th century CE Buddhist monks brought paper from China to Japan They also began the practice of origami, although it was a little bit different in those days Paper was invented in China around the 2nd century CE and it was fairly expensive Because production was somewhat labor-intensive Being an expensive material made it something to use for special occasions like religious rituals Wealthy people would sometimes use origami for gift-giving But I think the connection to religious rituals is probably most interesting In some ways the careful folding of paper and focus on craft feels very Meditative like the creation of sand mandalas It feels totally appropriate for it to be a tradition started by Buddhist monks Of course people in other cultures obviously have folded paper before There were folded paper sculptures in China But Japan is where the art form seems to have really taken hold and become a much bigger cultural phenomenon The name origami is interesting in and of itself early on the term Orikata was commonly used Orikata means folded shapes, but around 1880 people began using the name origami It comes from the same root ora meaning to fold and kami meaning paper Now I'm gonna preface this by saying I do not speak Japanese But this little bit of trivia struck me as odd because when I was first doing the research I recalled from way back in my college years that Hokusai created 36 views of Mount Fuji Including the famous great wave print because Mount Fuji was a kami site or A sacred site in the Shinto religion. Now. My understanding was that kami meant something like a spirit a god deity Apparently, it's a homophone meaning two words that sound the same but with different meanings There isn't a lot of documentation I could find as to why the shift happened from calling it orikata to origami some scholars say it was simply easier for schoolchildren to write the characters for origami and Origami has been used in schools to teach math concepts Still I think there's something really interesting about that shift built off the word kami which means paper but also a deity when considering the origin with origami being associated with Religious rituals and their superstitions like the idea that someone who creates 1,000 paper cranes will have a wish granted There's something sort of spiritual and meditative about origami There's this great quote when you fold The ritual and the act of creation is more important than the final result When your hands are busy your heart is serene end quote that quote comes from Akira Yoshizawa a man considered to be the Grandmaster of origami while origami has been practiced for hundreds of years It's gone through some drastic changes in the way It was perceived by people as I said early on when paper was really expensive and labor-intensive to produce Origami was for the select few and for special occasions as Paper became more affordable Ordinary people made origami models as gifts or folding cards and envelopes for correspondence It was used as I said to illustrate concepts like geometry in school and became associated with schoolchildren For a long time origami remained at a relatively low status Dismissed as a child's craft rather than a fine art of a mature artist Akira Yoshizawa probably elevated the art form more than anyone else He was born March 14th 1911 in Kaminokawa, Japan I don't think it'll come as a huge shock to anyone that he enjoyed origami as a kid I've read that he was largely self-taught as a hobby when he was growing up But just as a hobby at age 13 That's right 13. He started his career He took a job in a factory in Tokyo Later on in his 20s Akira was promoted taking on a position as a draftsman required him to teach a little bit of geometry to people working under him and Akira found origami to be helpful in demonstrating some of those concepts in 1937 he left his job at a factory to pursue origami full-time Now this was a bold and seemingly foolish move I mean typically we hear about artists quitting their day jobs when their career takes off Akira Yoshizawa quit his day job in the hopes that origami would take off at that time The entire art form was still largely dismissed as a child's pastime He lived in poverty for years He earned just enough to get by by going door-to-door selling Sukudani, which appears to be some sort of preserved food made from seaweed and soy sauce During World War two Akira Yoshizawa served in Medical Corps He made origami to cheer up the patients until he himself fell ill It was around this time that his origami work started to gain some attention though in 1944 his work was included in an origami book, but his big break came in January of 1952 when his origami models of the 12 zodiac signs were included in the magazine Asahai graph in 1954 his first book was published Atarashi Origami Gejutsu translates to the new origami art and this book established the Yoshizawa Randlet system of notation for origami folds It's the system of symbols arrows and diagrams Which is basically the standard for origami instructions today That same year he founded the International Origami Center of Tokyo In addition to his system of instructions Yoshizawa was a pioneer of new techniques with the material itself Probably his biggest innovation was the creation of the wet fold technique The paper being slightly damp increases the plasticity making it easier to create more rounded naturalistic sculptures For those of you interested in trying some origami yourself Be aware the wet fold method requires thicker paper as Typical thin origami paper would rip too easily when it's wet Now to wrap up this episode I thought it'd be fun to share just a few facts about some more recent feats of origami first off the world's largest origami crane has a wingspan of 81.9 meters which is over 268 feet but the biggest from a single sheet of paper was just over seven meters in 2014 the artist Saifo Mabona Created a life-sized origami elephant from a single sheet of paper It took a team of a dozen people about four weeks to get the job done But in the end the origami elephant stood three meters or about ten feet tall Still, I think the most mind-boggling feat I noticed in my research was not the biggest but the smallest work The world's smallest origami crane was folded on a sheet of paper one millimeter by one millimeter Using a needle and a microscope Now to put that in perspective Imagine for a moment trying to fold an origami crane with a piece of glitter I never really had the patience or persistence to get graded origami But I never ceased to be amazed by those who have This concludes this week's episode of who arted part of the airwave media podcast network If you found this tolerable, please leave a rating review on your favorite podcast app You can find images of the work being discussed this week and every week on social media at who arted podcast on Twitter Instagram and TikTok and of course on the website who arted podcast.com podcast done