Year: 2012

Giant Installation Piece (25m long)

Published by ericgjerde

My partner Ioana Stoian and I were invited as guests of honor for the Salon Résonance in Strasbourg, France last month. One of the requirements of our participation was the creation of a large installation piece, sized for a space about four meters by four meters (or about 150 square feet). We created an extremely large work, based on my Dragon Helix pattern, using elephant hide sheets cut in to strips and then glued together to achieve a 42 meter long sheet of paper. By my calculations there are over 19,000 folds, 2.86km of creases, and about a month’s worth of actual time folding. It took from June 2012 until October 2012 to fold this thing; I had to stop folding at times because the paper was so rough on my hands that it hurt too much to keep folding. I believe this is one of the largest and most complex origami pieces ever made. There were over 16,000 visitors during the four days of the art salon, and it seemed like every one of …

Reveal

“Reveal”, a new work

Published by ericgjerde

Reveal, a new work, framed and mounted in a shadowbox. Made from handmade flax and abaca paper created by my partner, Ioana Stoian. As this paper was so vibrant and alive, I aimed for a simple pattern that helped to reveal some of the inner beauty of the paper without stealing attention from the paper itself. The paper was repeatedly dyed in natural indigo dye, and has an extremely organic nature to it. I’m very pleased with this work.  

Jorge Luis Borges covers

Cover images for Jorge Luis Borges

Published by ericgjerde

I recently worked with Knopf Books to supply cover art for two new reprints of classics by Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones (Vintage Espanol) (Spanish Edition) Historia Universal de la infamia (Vintage Espanol) (Spanish Edition) It was a lot of fun working on these projects; I’ve been doing a fair amount of image work with book publishers lately. I look forward to more opportunities like this!

Rapid Folding

Published by ericgjerde

Creating some background footage for a video presentation at an upcoming event- here’s two of the test clips, showing the folding of two different projects at 20x speed. I’m particularly fascinated by the sounds of all the paper crinkling and creasing at high speed, it’s an odd sound and very interesting.

Holland Paper Biennale 2012

Published by ericgjerde

I am participating as one of the artists in the Holland Paper Biennale 2012, at the Museum Rijswijk in the Hague, Netherlands. It opens September 4th and runs until November 25th. I’m very excited to be a part of this exhibition; it’s my first show that’s focused on paper arts at large, and not specifically origami. I’m particularly interested to see what papermakers and paper artists think about my bio-paper. It represents quite a bit of research and work, and I hope they find it as fascinating as I do! From the press release for the Paper Biennale: Origami works with sculptural eloquence in two individual styles. (…) A background in technology and a passion for paper are united in the geometrically folded creations of Eric Gjerde. In his most recent work he experiments with paper produced by bacteria. I will be at the opening September 1st, at the Museum Meermanno, and again at the opening on the 2nd, at the Museum Rijswijk. I look forward to meeting paper artists and friends there! I’m sure it …