Akira Yoshizawa Origami Biography
Biography Of Akira Yoshizawa
Images for Akira Yoshizawa

Living in Japan, I can’t help but notice the role that paper both functional and decorative plays in Japanese culture. Paper is used in doors, lanterns, dolls, boxes, fans, gift wrapping, and of course, the topic of today’s post – origami.

Origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding, stems from the Japanese verb oru (to fold), and the noun kami (paper). Thought to have originated in the 6th century, origami artists make geometric folds and crease patterns to create representations of objects and animals. Most Origami is created with Japanese washi, a strong paper, preferably without gluing or cutting, and using only one piece of paper.

While Japan is recognized as the country that most fully developed the traditional art of origami, paper folding also took place independently in Spain, Germany and other countries.

Considered to be the master, Akira Yoshizawa is credited with elevating origami into a serious form of figurative art. Born, in 1911, he was a factory worker in Tokyo until the mid-1930’s when he decided to pursue his art. Before WWII, Yoshizawa also studied for two years as a Buddhist priest, never entering a monastery, but remaining a devout Buddhist throughout his life.

For more than twenty years, Yoshizawa created his paper sculptures, earning a living by selling fish door to door. In the 1950’s, Yoshizawa gained recognition after being commissioned by a Japanese magazine to fold the 12 signs of the Japanese zodiac. The feature led to exhibitions in Japan and Amsterdam.

Yoshizawa’s work is considered to be more sculptural art than folded paper. Known for his simple lines, inspired by the natural world, Yoshizawa folded animated birds, gorillas, dragons, fish, plants and flowers. Yoshizawa is also known for his innovative folding techniques and for creating a system of origami instructions that are universally accessible.

Yoshizawa never sold any of his models and said that he considered them to be his children. He wrote 18 origami books that diagrammed a few hundred of his designs though it is estimated that he created more than 50,000 models.

Yoshizawa’s origami has been exhibited around the world and including the Cooper Union in New York, and the Louvre. In 1983, he received the Order of the Rising Sun, a national decoration awarded by the Japanese Government. Yoshizawa died on March 14, 2005 in hospital in Ogikubo, from complications of pneumonia, on his 94th birthday.

To find out more about Akira Yoshizawa and the art of origami visit Joseph Wu Origami.

Gumby animator Art Clokey dies at 88
Art Clokey, Arthur “Art” Clokey (October 12, 1921 – January 8, 2010) ,Art Clokey – Books, Biography, Contact Information

12 October 1921, Detroit, Michigan, USA

Date of Death
8 January 2010, Los Osos, California, USA (gall bladder infection)

Birth Name
Arthur Charles Farrington

Spouse
Gloria Clokey (23 October 1976 – 19 August 1998) (her death)
Ruth Clokey (1948 – 1966) (divorced) 2 children

Trade Mark

Works almost exclusively in clay animation.

Trivia

Father of Ann Clokey and video producer Joe Clokey.

Adopted by Joseph Clokey, a musician, a composer and dean of music department at Pomona College in California, after being sent by his mother to a home for abandoned boys.

He and his then-wife Ruth Clokey created Gumby, which made its debut on The Howdy Doody Show in August 1956 while Clokey was studying under Slavko Vorkapich at USC. The Clokeys also created Davey and Goliath.

Art Clokey Biography (1921-)

Born in 1921, in Detroit, MI; adopted son of Joseph Clokey (a composer); divorced; married second wife Gloria Stamm; children Ann (first marriage), deceased, and Joe. Career: Producer and director. Creator of characters Gumby, 1956, and Davey and Goliath. Worked on a music video for Dinah Shore usingclay figures. Military service: U.S. Armed Forces, World War II. Addresses: Contact: 280 Waterside Circle, San Rafael, CA 94903-2795.

Nationality
American
Occupation
Producer, director
Birth Details
1921
Detroit, Michigan, United States

Famous Works

CREDITS
Television Creator, Director and Producer
The Gumby Show (originally a segment of Howdy Doody, 1956),NBC, 1957syndicated, 1966syndicated, 1988
Davey and Goliath, syndicated, 1960-65
Film Work
Producer, Mandala, 1975
Character creator and technical advisor, The Puppetoon Movie, Family Home Entertainment, 1986
Director, producer, cinematographer, and animator, Gumby: The Movie, Arrow Releasing, 1995
Film Appearances
Voice of Pokey, Prickle, and Gumbo, Gumby: The Movie, Arrow Releasing, 1995
WRITINGS
Television
The Gumby Show (originally a segment of Howdy Doody, 1956),NBC, 1957syndicated, 1966syndicated, 1988
Davey and Goliath, syndicated, 1960-65
Screenplays
(And storyboard) Gumby: The Movie, Arrow Releasing, 1995
RECORDINGS
Video
Gumby’s Incredible Journey, Family Home Entertainment, 1956
Gumby Adventures, Family Home Entertainment, 1956
Gumby’s and the Moon Boggles, Family Home Entertainment, 1956
Gumby’s Supporting Cast, Family Home Entertainment, 1986

Further Reference

OTHER SOURCES

Books:

Something About the Author, Volume 59, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1990.

Periodicals:

People Weekly, February 4, 1985, .
Village Voice, March 17, 1987, .*

The biography of Jorge Luis Borges
Biography of Jorge Luís Borges (1899-1986)
Jorge Luis Borges – Argentine Writer – Biography

Encyclopedia of World Biography on Jorge Luis Borges

The Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was one of Latin America’s most original and influential prose writers and poets. His short stories revealed him as one of the great stylists of the Spanish language.

Jorge Luis Borges was born on August 24, 1899, in Buenos Aires. A few years later his family moved to the northern suburb of Palermo, which he was to celebrate in prose and verse. He received his earliest education at home, where he learned English and read widely in his father’s library of English books. When Borges was nine years of age, he began his public schooling in Palermo, and in the same year, published his first literary undertaking–a translation into Spanish of Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince.”

In 1914 the Borges family traveled to Europe. When World War I broke out, they settled for the duration in Switzerland where young Borges finished his formal education at the Collège in Geneva. By 1919, when the family moved on to Spain, Borges had learned several languages and had begun to write and translate poetry.

Early Work

In Seville and Madrid he frequented literary gatherings where he absorbed the lessons of new poetical theorists of the time–especially those of Rafael Cansinos Asséns, who headed a group of writers who came to be known as “ultraists.” When the family returned to Argentina in 1921, Borges rediscovered his native Buenos Aires and began to write poems dealing with his intimate feelings for the city, its past, and certain fading features of its quiet suburbs. His early poetry was reflective in tone; metaphors dominated, usual linking words were suppressed, and the humble, tranquil aspects of the city that he evoked seemed somehow contaminated by eternity.

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Jorge Luis Borges

With other young Argentine writers, Borges collaborated in the founding of new publications, in which the ultraist mode was cultivated in the New World. In 1923 his first volume of poetry, Fervor of Buenos Aires, was published, and it also made somewhat of a name for him in Spain.

In 1925 his second book of poetry, Moon across the Way, appeared, followed in 1929 by San Martin Notebook–the last new collection of his verse to appear for three decades. Borges gradually developed a keen interest in literary criticism. His critical and philosophical essays began to fill most of the volumes he published during the period 1925-1940: Inquisitions (1925), The Dimensions of My Hope (1926), The Language of the Argentines (1928), Evaristo Carriego (1930), Discussion (1932), and History of Eternity (1938).

Change in Style

In 1938, with his father gravely ill from a heart ailment, Borges obtained an appointment in a municipal library in Buenos Aires. Before year’s end, his father died. Borges, himself, came close to death from septicemia, the complication of an infected head injury.

This period of crisis produced an important change in Borges. He began to write prose fiction tales of a curious and highly original character. These pieces seemed to be philosophical essays invested with narrative qualities and tensions. Others were short stories infused with metaphorical concepts. Ten of these concise, well-executed stories were collected in Ficciones (1944). A second volume of similar tales, entitled The Aleph, was published in 1949. Borges’s fame as a writer firmly rests on the narratives contained in these two books, to which other stories were added in later editions.

In 1955, following the overthrow of the Peronist regime in Argentina, Borges was named director of the National Library in Buenos Aires. In that same year his sight deteriorated to the point where he became almost totally blind.

After The Aleph, he published an important collection of essays, Other Inquisitions (1952); several collections of poetry and prose sketches, Dreamtigers (1960), In Praise of Darkness (1969), The Deep Rose (1975), and The Iron Coin (1976); and two collections of new short stories, Dr. Brodie’s Report (1970) and The Book of Sand (1975). Aside from these works, Borges wrote over a dozen books in collaboration with other persons. Foremost among his collaborators was Adolfo Bioy Casares, an Argentine novelist and short-story writer, who was Borges’s closest literary associate for nearly 40 years. A Viking collection of Borges’s work began in 1998 with Alexander Coleman (editor),Borges’s Collected Fictions and followed by Selected Poems (1999), a bilingual volume of 200 poems covering the range of Borges’s work.

In 1961 Borges shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers Prize, and world recognition at last began to come his way. He received countless honors and prizes. In 1970 he was the first recipient of the $25,000 Matarazzo Sobrinho Inter-American Literary Prize.

Borges married Elsa Astete Millan in 1967 but was divorced in 1970. He married Maria Kodama in 1986, shortly before his death on June 14, in Geneva, Switzerland.

On March 13, 2000, the National Book Critics Circle honored Borges’s memory with the criticism award for his collection “Selected Non-Fictions.” The collection won praise for its sharp criticism and philosophical incisiveness.

Pierre de Fermat (1601 – 1665)
Fermat biography
Philosophers : Pierre de Fermat

Born: 17-Aug-1601
Birthplace: Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France
Died: 12-Jan-1665
Location of death: Castres, France
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Mathematician

Nationality: France
Executive summary: Fermat’s Last Theorem

French mathematician, born on the 17th of August 1601, at Beaumont-de-Lomagne near Montauban. While still young, he, along with Blaise Pascal, made some discoveries in regard to the properties of numbers, on which he afterwards built his method of calculating probabilities. He discovered a simpler method of quadrating parabolas than that of Archimedes, and a method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines analogous to that of the then unknown differential calculus. His great work De Maximis et Minimis brought him into conflict with René Descartes, but the dispute was chiefly due to a want of explicitness in the statement of Fermat. His brilliant research entitled him to rank as the founder of the modern number theory. They originally took the form of marginal notes in a copy of Bachet’s Diophantus, and were published in 1670 by his son Samuel, who incorporated them in a new edition of this Greek writer. Other theorems were published in his Opera Varia, and in John Wallis’s Commercium Epistolicum (1658). He died in the belief that he had found a relation which every prime number must satisfy, namely 2^(2n) + I = a prime. This was afterwards disproved by Leonhard Euler for the case when n = 5. Fermat’s Theorem, if p is prime and a is prime to p then a^(p-1)- I is divisible by p, was first given in a letter of 1640. Fermat’s Problem, or more commonly, Fermat’s Last Theorem is that x^n + y^n = z^n is impossible for integral values of x, y and z when n is greater than 2.

Fermat was for some time councillor for the parliament of Toulouse, and in the discharge of the duties of that office he was distinguished both for legal knowledge and for strict integrity of conduct. Though the sciences were the principal objects of his private studies, he was also an accomplished general scholar and an excellent linguist. He died at Toulouse on the 12th of January 1665. He left a son, Samuel de Fermat (1630-1690) who published translations of several Greek authors and wrote certain books on law in addition to editing his father’s works.

The Opera Mathematica of Fermat were published at Toulouse, in two folio volumes, 1670 and 1679. The first contains the “Arithmetic of Diophantus”, with notes and additions. The second includes a “Method for the Quadrature of Parabolas”, and a treatise “on Maxima and Minima, on Tangents, and on Centers of Gravity” containing the same solutions of a variety of problems as were afterwards incorporated into the more extensive method of fluxions by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. In the same volume are treatises on “Geometric Loci, or Spherical Tangencies”, and on the “Rectification of Curves”, besides a restoration of “Apollonius’s Plane Loci”, together with the author’s correspondence addressed to Descartes, Pascal, Roberval, Huygens and others. The Oeuvres of Fermat have been re-edited by P. Tannery and C. Henry (Paris, 1891-94).

Law School: University of Orléans (1631)

Basque Ancestry

Is the subject of books:
The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665), 1973, BY: Michael S. Mahoney

Alexander Calder Artwork Information
Encyclopedia of World Biography on Alexander Calder
Birth Year : 1898
Death Year : 1976
Country : US
Alexander Calder was born July 22, 1898, in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, into a family of artists–his father was a sculptor and his mother a painter. Because his father Alexander Stirling Calder received public commissions, the family traversed the country throughout Alexander Calder’s childhood. Alexander Calder was encouraged to create, and from the age of eight he always had his own workshop wherever* the family lived. For Christmas in 1909, Alexander Calder presented his parents with two of his first sculptures, a tiny dog and duck cut from a brass sheet and bent into formation. The duck is kinetic– it rocks back and forth when tapped. Even at age eleven, his facility in handling materials was apparent.

Despite his talents, Alexander Calder did not originally set out to become an artist. He instead enrolled at the Stevens Institute of Technology after high school and graduated in 1919 with an engineering degree. After completing his studies, Alexander Calder worked for several years persueing various jobs, including hydraulics and automotive engineering, timekeeping in a logging camp, and working as fireman in a ship’s boiler room. While serving in the latter occupation, on a ship from New York bound for San Francisco, Alexander Calder awoke on the deck to see both a brilliant sunrise and a scintillating full moon; each was visible on opposite horizons (the ship then lay off the Guatemalan coast). The experience made a lasting impression on Alexander Calder: he would refer to it throughout his life.

Alexander Calder committed to becoming an artist shortly thereafter, and in 1923 he moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students’ League. He also took a job illustrating for the National Police Gazette, which sent him to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus to sketch circus scenes for two weeks in 1925. The circus became a lifelong interest of Alexander Calder’s, and after moving to Paris in 1926, he created his Cirque Calder, a complex and unique body of art. The assemblage included diminutive performers, animals, and props he had observed at the Ringling Brothers Circus. Fashioned from wire, leather, cloth, and other found materials, Cirque Calder was designed to be manipulated manually by Calder. Every piece was small enough to be packed into a large trunk, enabling the artist to carry it with him and hold performances anywhere. Its first performance was held in Paris for an audience of friends and peers, and soon Alexander Calder was presenting the circus in both Paris and New York to much success. Alexander Calder’s renderings of his circus often lasted about two hours and were quite elaborate. Indeed, the Cirque Calder predated performance art by forty years.

In the fall of 1931, a significant turning point in Alexander Calder’s artistic career occurred when he created his first truly kinetic sculpture and gave form to an entirely new type of art. The first of these objects moved by systems of cranks and motors, and were dubbed “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, for in French mobile refers to both motion and motive. Alexander Calder soon abandoned the mechanical aspects of these works when he realized he could fashion mobiles that would undulate on their own with the air’s currents. Jean Arp, in order to differentiate Alexander Calder’s non-kinetic works from his kinetic works, named Alexander Calder’s stationary objects “stabiles.”

From time to time Alexander Calder took breaks from his sculptural endeavors to explore other mediums through which to express forms and ideas. These detours often led him to work in gouache, ink and other water-based materials, creating two-dimensional works on paper. For a brief period, Calder even painted with oils. Later in his career, Alexander Calder began to explore the medium of lithography. He produced several editions of wonderfully colorful lithographs that reveal his fascination with line and its interaction with color. Despite how little experience Calder had with the medium, its a wonder how his images achieve the same playfulness and intelligence of his more well known scultural works.

The forties and fifties were a remarkably productive period for Alexander Calder. While visiting Alexander Calder’s studio about this time, Marcel Duchamp was intrigued by these small works. Inspired by the idea that the works could be easily dismantled, mailed to Europe, and re-assembled for an exhibition, he planned a Alexander Calder show at Galerie Louis Carré in Paris. Galerie Maeght in Paris also held a Calder show in 1950, and subsequently became Alexander Calder’s exclusive Parisian dealer. His association with Galerie Maeght lasted twenty-six years, until his death in 1976.