by Andrew Moseman
Caltech alumnus Robert Lang (BS ’82, PhD ’86) crafted some of the world’s finest paper-folding creations from his Altadena studio. His works of origami included a denim tarantula, a tiny organist, and dozens upon dozens of other astounding pieces. Now, that collection is gone.
Lang, a physicist –turned –origami artist whom Caltech awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2009, lost both his home and studio in January’s devastating Eaton Fire. Fleeing the blaze with his family and their many animals, Lang saved only a single piece of his collection, a cuckoo clock made of a single piece of paper.
The New Yorker has a full account of Lang’s experience:
The studio held much of his art, and all of his tools. The laser cutter he used to help make prototypes had melted. “It’s now a pile of metal,” he said. “A 3-D printer is now a pile of ash.” Rare paper, including fig-based paper from a tiny village in Mexico, had burned. He went on, “There were correspondence letters with other origami artists over the years that were a historical record for me and perhaps for others. And then my exhibition collection was there. The pieces I had in MoMA”—a large grizzly bear, a bull moose, and a fiddler crab, all folded between 2003 and 2007—“are gone.”
Read the full story here.