Madonna Yoder

Statement

When you start looking at origami tessellations you might think that in order to make new designs you'll need to make very difficult designs. My experience breaks that pattern - I've designed and folded over 300 unique origami tessellations while sticking to a small set of twists. How do I do it? I focus on finding different symmetry applications in common structures and also on finding new structures that use common shapes. Then I create a tree structure of the choices needed to fill the chosen structure in the chosen symmetry and explore the breadth of that tree. What I've found is that origami tessellations have not only an infinite possible expression in a single pattern, but also an infinite number of patterns to explore.

Artworks

Hybrid Hexagon Weave was a surprising discovery when I was experimenting with using 3-fold hybrid hexagon twists in an alternating hexagons and triangles structure. This arrangement of twists eliminates the position of 6-fold rotational symmetry from the structure, replacing it with three distinct positions of 3-fold rotational symmetry in the center of each different hexagon twist used - hybrid, open, and closed. I was able to use both closed and open triangle twists to go between these three different hexagons, none of which occupy positions of rotational symmetry. See if you can spot the three 3-fold rotationally symmetric positions in the piece!