Robert J. Lang Lecture at Brown University

Last week I attended a lecture at Brown University by Robert J. Lang, a renowned origami artist whose work I’ve followed for several years now. The innovations he’s accomplished in origami are breathtaking, but I’ve also been particularly drawn to his work because of the dramatic career shift he made to get to where he is now.  Lang had a long career as a physicist for many years before taking the leap into origami.  I can’t imagine that it would have been easy to be in a scientific field for that long, and then to tell everyone one day that you were going to drop your career to make origami.

I was thrilled when I heard Lang would be speaking at Brown, and I knew immediately exactly what question I wanted to ask him at the lecture during the Q&A: how did he get the guts to transition from being a physicist to being a full-time origami artist? Lang said that he had been working on a book that eventually became the “Origami Design Secrets.” He worked on the book on nights and weekends, but realized quickly that if he didn’t drop everything and focus exclusively on this book, that the book would never happen. He also said that he recognized that there would always be plenty of other physicists in the world, many who were much more accomplished than he was, but he felt that he was literally the only person who could write this book. That and having some savings in the bank helped.

That evening as I drove home from the lecture, I ruminated over Lang’s response to my question. I realized how comparable my own circumstances were to Lang’s description of his decision to begin a career in origami.  There will always be a multitude of fine artists out there, many of whom I will never be able to hold a candle to in terms of noteworthy achievements in the field.  I won’t land a paragraph in future art history textbooks, but I really do believe that I am the only one who is capable of doing my new project. Like Lang, my new project is now or never.  That’s a new level of conviction that I haven’t experienced before in my work.

So what is my new project?  Right now I have to stay mum, but I can tell you that the process started back in November 2014, and some major movement has happened in recent weeks. If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been blogging as frequently, this is why. I haven’t had this many late nights since my freshman year at RISD. This project has been exhilarating, stressful, scary, and completely riveting.  The best way I can describe this project is that it’s like having the world’s most delicious piece of cake in your mouth, with a guillotine positioned 2 mm from your neck at the same time. You’re afraid to bite into the cake because at any moment, that guillotine could come down.  For a while, the thought of that guillotine was paralyzing, but I know now that I have to bite down on the cake regardless of my fear.  I might get metaphorically executed, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Stay tuned, much more will be revealed in the next two months.  If all goes well, I’ll have something big and new to show you in January 2016.