Art Lessons

Back in the Spring, I started substituting for teachers at my daughters’ schools. One particular day, I filled in for a middle-school art teacher who’d left instructions for her students to watch videos. One of the videos was a documentary about origami art, Between the Folds, which I showed to no less than four classes. By the third time through, I finally paid attention to it and ended up learning some valuable lessons about the creation of art.

One of the artists interviewed was a physicist who left his career to become a full-time origami artist. Robert J. Lang said he was having the most fun of his life.

Another gentleman highlighted in the documentary was Japanese origami artist Yakira Yoshizawa who had made over 50,000 pieces but had never sold one because he thought of his creations as his children.

Israeli origami artist Paul Jackson said this of his work: “The process of making is the point … take it to the edge of something because that’s always where the interesting things happen.”

Artist Chris Palmer noted this about the creative process: “You try to strive for the final thing being good, but you’re also very well aware of how beautiful the process is.”

A group of avant-garde origami artists called Le Crimp create pieces by crumpling paper instead of folding it: “From chaos their work is born.”

There are several important lessons about art that I took away from the documentary:

• It’s okay to walk away from a sure thing in order to pursue your passion—the thing that fulfills you and makes you happy.
• Art is priceless to the artist. Sometimes we create art simply because it burns and bursts from within us, not because we want to make a profitable living from it.
• If we push past the point where we want to give up or quit, art (and life) will become more interesting.
• We often begin with the end in mind, but the messy middle is usually where we’ll find the most beauty.
• Chaos is not necessarily always a bad thing. What looks and feels like chaos just might be the process of creating a priceless work of art.