About

“Origami for Teaching and Loving”

Sylvie started origami in June 2023 by joining the wonderful (and free) Chicago Area Origami Society (CHAOS for short) and with Jun Maekawa’s book, Genuine Origami.

Since then she has focused and loved origami for teaching. She has taught at conventions, at the SMART museum in collaboration with the Meiji Modern exhibit, has taught at the architecture department’s Open Studio (weekly 5-8pm on Wednesdays, free food at 6!), and often leads sessions teaching people new to origami at monthly CHAOS meetings.

One of her favorite teaching experiences was 1 month into doing origami teaching with CHAOS at the Japan Cultural Convention last summer. With a setup on a folding table, 2/3 of it was dedicated to a gallery of different (incredible!!) origami works, with the other 1/3 for teaching. With a crew of 4-7 members there at a time, they had originally planned to rotate in shifts to cover the convention’s duration from 11-5, but Sylvie ended up teaching for all 6 hours straight.

She taught Akira Yoshizawa’s butterfly to over 120 people, powered off of one onigiri.

Nowadays when not teaching at an event, she loves to teach origami casually to her friends and anyone else who’s interested.

Her exhibition is a compilation of the models she has taught over and over. Each of them comes from varying sources like friends, books, and magazines, each with its own significance, history, and character.

Her most taught model is the Yoshizawa butterfly, and the hardest model she’s taught has been Hideo Komatsu’s fox.

She wants to shout out OrigamiUSA and their monthly magazine: The Fold, for providing her free access to what have become some of her favorite models.

If you ever see her around, you can always ask to fold and she’ll be happy to talk.