One Crease, Much Beauty
by Susan Leem, associate producer
The documentary Between the Folds won a Peabody Award this year for chronicling origami artists who reinterpret the world through folding paper. Though the film features elaborate technical mastery and the possibilities for physics, Paul Jackson, an origami teacher from Tel Aviv, Israel, describes a broader philosophy by demonstrating the elegance of a single fold of paper and the unexpected shapes that can be created:
“This is the lesson of one crease, that you don’t need to have a very strong knowledge of origami technique to make something beautiful that you feel is in some way significant and interesting.”
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I really enjoyed that video, and I would like to add to it. I want to say that it is also a problem with people, not just origami and painting. We say “That person doesn’t look how that should,” or “…talk like they should,” or “…walk how they should,” or “…smile like they should,” or “…dress like they should,” etcetera and infinity. We measure each other and we measure ourselves, but to what? What can we possibly measure ourselves to? Other human beings? Drawings? Paintings? Photographs? Origami? Trees? The sky? The color green? Of course we’d never be right, comparing ourselves to these things. We are incomparable! Just like one-fold origami, we are incomparable as whole beings. Sure, different pieces are comparable, but there is no comparison when you accept the whole image, the whole work of art.
The problem is that just as with origami, painting, music, and all other things visual most people just love to measure worth. It would be to difficult not to. There would be too much thinking, too much “level 3″ communication, too much vulnerability. Because if we cannot compare, how do we know what we have achieved?
We have such little faith in ourselves that we cannot simply say “I have done great things,” without comparing our great works to another person’s.
Wow, now I’ve gone even deeper than I had expected to, and in typing this comment I have allowed myself some new insights. Thank you for sharing!