(Melodious music)
- [Narrator] Welcome to the wild
and wonderful world of origami.
(Melodious music)
In 2019, Portland hosted the Pacific Coast
OrigamiUSA Convention, for the first time.
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The national convention takes place every two years,
and brings together hundreds of artists and enthusiasts
of the paper, folding art.
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[Narrator] This is Yuki Martin,
an origami artist and teacher.
She helped bring the event to Oregon.
- I just felt like... it would be fun,
for us to host it here,
cause we've never done that here.
People who come to Portland for this convention
from different parts of the country,
will benefit from the culture here.
- [Yuki] You could also use just the food dyes,
which is very accessible and cheap.
- [Narrator] Yuki is teaching a class on Orizomegami,
- Or the art of folding and dying paper.
- [Yuki] Unfold, and this is kind of like opening presents.
(people "Oh my gosh!... So pretty!)
(people "Very cool.")
(I love that little effect right in there")
- Origami is something that I grew up doing
because I grew up in Japan
and that's what we do in preschool and elementary school,
as a way to learn about different shapes
or fine tune, the fine motor skills,
make friends with other people.
Origami can teach you so many different things.
- [Narrator] Jenessa Munt, another Portland Origami artist,
attended the convention to showcase her unique style
of dollar bill origami.
- [Janessa] Origami conventions are a way
that a lot of people
in the origami community to get to kind of travel
and see their friends.
You can make things as complex as you want
and as detailed as you want.
But I don't like to do that cause I like my things
to be very accessible,
I wanna be able to make them in a few minutes
when I'm just sitting next to someone.
When I designed an Origami model,
my process is for instance, if I am designing a bulldog,
I try to think about like,
what are the defining characteristics of a bulldog?
So it's got ears, it's kind of chubby, short legs
and a little tail.
So I try to like rank out
what I think the most defining characteristics are.
and then I just incorporate those,
so a lot of my things aren't necessarily
how things look realistically,
they are just kind of like,
how they look when you imagine them.
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- [Narrator] For Janessa and Yuki,
this convention is more than a simple get together.
It's a way to show that just about anything can be made
into Origami art.
- [Yuki] You wanna form a triangle?
- [Narrator] All it takes is a sheet of paper
and a little imagination.
- [Yuki] And then...lay out this edge.
- [Janessa] Especially if something is niche as Origami,
a lot of times people don't really get to interact
with other people who are into the same thing.
And I think when you have all these great minds
who are really good at it,
collaborating together and people are able to learn
from each other and just progress a lot faster.
- [Yuki] It just seems so limited,
to just for the paper from one sheet of paper,
but the possibilities are so unlimited.
It can be as simple as folding a few times,
or he can be as complex as hundreds,
maybe thousands of folds to make something
that is very realistic and amazing.
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