There's been a shortcoming in the paper tangrams that I've been presenting in this series of tangram posts. The feel of paper tiles can have an unsatisfying feel if the paper is light. Creating them from heavy paper or greeting cards can be helpful, but for more heft there is a better solution, which, no surprise, Hedi Kyle introduced me when I saw her a few weeks ago. Hedi folds her tangram tiles from paper: the resulting pieces are a nice weight, slide around easily, and can be made from all those beautiful, lightweight origami and decorated papers in your collection. There's an extra bonus: these folded tangram tiles have pockets! Oh, I love pockets.
Here's how it went: when I admired the tangrams on Hedi's work desk, she briefly waxed poetically about her appreciation of the form, which I responded to by showing her work I had done with children and tangrams, like what was in the first post of this series. She then animatedly talked about folding the pieces, and how it took just five pieces of identically sized origami papers to make all the pieces. She asked if I wanted to see the instructions of how to do it. Well, of course!
The book Hedi referenced is The New Origami by Steve and Megumi Biddle. It's a thoroughly delightful book, which, happily, is freely available on the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/SteveAndMegumiBiddleTheNewOrigami/mode/2up. Tangram directions start on page 46. If you think this means I'm going to let you work out the directions on your own, you are mistaken. This is why YouTube was invented.
Be sure to use the pockets to attach pieces together to make a whole new assortment of images…OH! Which reminds me, I've been meaning to link to Cathryn Millers post about tangrams, which includes a beautifully colored tangram PDF and a link to a great tangram resource.
Here's a bit of a story that makes me shake my head in wonder…after my last post, my friend Jade wrote to me, asking me if I'd be interested in the directions for folding tangrams that she had received from Hedi during a workshop in 2015. What impressed me about this was that, during my recent conversation with Hedi, her excitement and enthusiasm about tangrams felt fresh, as if she had just recently started playing with them…but obviously not! Jade's workshop with Hedi was eight years ago! Geez, I hope my ability to remain delighted with things has this same kind of lasting power.
To end this post, let me tell you a bit more about another conversation that Susan Share, Mindell Dubansky, and I had with Hedi and her husband Jurgen as we sat around their kitchen table this past June. The subject of how Hedi felt about us teaching structures that she created came up, specifically in regards to a lovely exposed sewing of Hedi's design that Susan would like to teach, maybe next spring. Hedi waved away the request for permission to teach her designs, saying "Teach everything!" This was great to hear. Generally, I've only taught what I've learned directly from her after it has been out in the world so long that many people are already teaching these methods. I always credit her influence, and I hope others will do the same.
In that spirit, I've started a video playlist of the few structures of Hedi's that I've recorded, based on her work. I hope to be adding to this playlist in the future, as it feels important to me that there is plenty of documentation of the work that she has done since she has been so widely influential. Here's the link to my playlist which references some of Hedi's work.
Now go make some tiles… your homework is to send me images of what you've created with them. You can find my email on my badly neglected About tab.
Here's what happens when you get overly excited making tangram pieces
There will be just one more post in this tangram blog series, and one more video in the tangram playlist.
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