Translator: Sanja Srbljinović Čuček Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Hello.
What did I do for a career?
Well, I followed my passion.
Because, as my life was unfolding,
my career was literally folding.
Paper folding.
When I was a young boy,
I lived in Yorkshire, in the North of England,
and my mum used to clean houses.
In the school holidays,
I would have to go with her because I couldn't stay home alone.
One house that she cleaned had a bathroom with an incredible stained-glass window,
and every time I went to that house,
I would spend a long period of time inside the bathroom.
Why?
Because the stained glass would cast amazing patterns of light and shade
all over the bathroom walls.
It was like being inside a magic rainbow
to a young boy.
So to occupy myself,
what I did was take sheets of toilet tissue and just play with them.
And one day, to my complete amazement,
I saw that I'd made this:
a paper yacht.
(Applause)
Thank you.
I was so excited!
From that day onwards, I made hundreds of paper yachts,
and origami, the art of paper folding,
became my hobby.
As an older boy, I became interested in art.
And when I was 18, I left school and went to art college for six years.
In my first year at art college,
I joined the British Origami Society
and found myself to be the center of some attention.
Why?
Well, I was one of the few people making new designs.
And this gave me some status and deepened my interest in folding paper.
In my last year at art school, I was at the Slade School of Art in London
and my professor heard about the origami I was doing
and asked me to bring some in to show him.
So by this time, I'd made lots and lots of different designs -
all kinds of animals and buildings
and objects and geometric shapes -
so I proudly brought in a few of them
and put them on the table for us to look at.
He looked at them, became angry, and said,
'Get them out of here. This is not art!
I don't want to see them!'
Wow!
That reaction changed my life,
because from that moment, I was an artist who folded paper.
So I completed my time in the art school
and just belly-flopped out into the real world
as many art students do.
How was I to make a living?
How do you make a living folding paper?
I didn't know.
Nobody had ever done this in the West.
I had no role model.
So I tried lots of things,
and they all failed.
Everything failed, nothing worked.
And then, after two years,
two things happened, one after the other,
which together gave me a living.
First thing that happened was I found a new use for paper:
writing letters.
So I wrote a letter
to 105 different higher education art and design courses
all over London -
I'll never forget the number -
saying, 'If you give me three days teaching,
I'll work with your students and teach them to fold.'
And I got 10 or 15 replies,
and suddenly I was working and earning money
and feeling good about myself.
Except the teaching wasn't really very good
because I was teaching origami designs,
my designs - horses and butterflies -
thinking, Why do students of design need to learn these designs?
because these are the products of folding.
What I should be teaching is the process of folding,
the techniques of folding.
So I changed all my workshops to teach the techniques of folding,
and then it just seemed to work.
And since that time, I've worked in more than 80 schools of design
all over the world,
teaching all kinds of students
to work with all kinds of materials
to make all kinds of product.
Now, the second thing that happened
was that the great master of origami in Japan,
Akira Yoshizawa,
was invited to England as a guest of the British Origami Society,
and he was to appear on BBC Television,
and I was invited to accompany him to the TV Centre,
and I was really honoured to be invited to go.
Unfortunately, on the morning of the broadcast,
the ceiling in the hovel of the bedsit that I was living in
decided to unfold itself,
and it fell down
on top of all my stuff.
Everything I had was covered in a layer of gray plaster,
and I was really traumatized.
Everything I had was destroyed.
What do I do?
Do I stay and fix it?
Or do I leave it and go to the BBC?
And what do you think I did?
Yes, I went to the BBC,
where, by complete chance,
I met a publisher
who had just published a small book of paper aeroplanes.
And it was selling quite well.
And did I have any ideas for any other books?
Did I? Yes, I did.
Two weeks later, I signed a contract for my first origami book,
and I've written 40 books since then
on origami for children, for adults,
also books about pop-ups and paper sculpture, packaging,
and recently, it's a series of books about folding techniques for designers.
So, there I was, suddenly earning money.
And that's pretty much how I've earned my living ever since.
Now, one by-product of teaching folding techniques to the students,
and not the origami designs,
was that I started to use those techniques in my own artwork.
And I began to develop a language of form that was abstract.
And so I call these folded paper sculptures
rather than origami designs,
and I found that I could readily exhibit these in museums and galleries.
And I've been exhibiting ever since.
Now, that's pleasing for two reasons:
First reason, because I'm an artist,
and all artists like to exhibit.
The second reason is it proved my professor wrong.
(Laughter)
Origami - folding paper - could be accepted as art.
And believe me,
there is nothing more satisfying than proving your professor wrong.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So, what kept me going
through the ridicule, the hardship,
the rejection, the collapsing ceilings?
Why didn't I give up and do something more sensible?
Well, I love folding paper.
What other reason could there be?
So, I want to explain why I love it so much,
and the best way to explain
is to show you.
So,
the first reason is this:
that folding paper is something anybody can do,
anywhere,
at any time.
All you need is a piece of paper.
You don't need any tools,
you don't need equipment,
you don't need a workshop.
It's not high-tech, of course,
and it's not even low-tech;
it's what I call 'no tech',
(Laughter)
meaning that you make it with nothing,
you make it with just your body.
Now, I think in today's high-tech, digitalized environment,
that's a very valuable and special idea
that's inspiring to makers and designers everywhere.
Second reason is folding paper is inherently smart and aesthetic;
it's not a dumb thing to do.
It's a dance between your hands and the paper.
It's a ballet, a kind of duet, a pas de deux.
It's also a partnership between your hands and your mind,
not so much with your eyes,
not in my case anyway.
When you work like that, it's very intimate,
something very fulfilling, very rewarding.
People enjoy to fold.
So you put something into it, and you get a lot back.
Third reason is that folding paper is a kind of magic.
It's not a trick, it's magic.
But perhaps a better word is alchemy.
Do you remember the old alchemists?
They were slightly crazy people
who tried to convert ordinary metal to gold,
usually by boiling it for 10 years.
So, of course, they failed because they didn't understand,
in those days,
about chemical elements and so on.
But I think that folding paper
is a kind of alchemy.
But it's a successful alchemy
because you take something ordinary,
just a sheet of paper,
and you can form something from it that's a piece of gold.
So I want to show you
what my piece of gold is that I've been making here.
It's almost finished.
It's a bird.
(Applause) (Cheers)
This is my design.
Thank you.
No, no, no!
Thank you for liking it!
(Laughter)
And fourthly, why do I like it?
Because I can give it to somebody.
I can share what I make.
So, please. Thank you.
Origami, folding paper, is not exclusive;
it's inclusive.
When I was an art student,
only three people were interested in what I was making:
my mum, my dad and my best friend.
But when you fold paper, anybody can appreciate it
because it touches people quite deeply.
There's something about the activity that anybody connects with.
Doesn't matter if you're a child,
if you're an adult with this background or that culture or whatever.
Everybody finds something of value in folding paper.
To me, that's incredibly special.
So you put all these things together,
and suddenly folding paper is not trivial.
It's not something to get mad about.
It's something to enjoy and to pursue.
So what's my message?
Why am I here, really?
Four words:
Believe in your passion.
Those passions are ignited,
sometimes in strange circumstances
or inconsequential circumstances,
anytime, anywhere,
even inside a magic rainbow, playing with toilet tissue.
If you so choose,
those small experiences can define your life.
Thank you very much!
(Applause) (Cheers)