Robert Lang's Flying Walking Stick
Robert J. Lang, one of the world’s leading masters of origami, who is serving as the 2010-2011 Rydell Professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, will do public foldings of his work on Monday, January 24 from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m., and Wednesday, January 26 from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m., in the lower level of the Jackson Campus Center of Gustavus Adolphus College, across from the Book Mark. All are welcome to drop by and watch Lang at work.
As part of his Rydell Professorship, Lang is co-teaching a January Term class, Mathematics & Origami, and his works, including those done during the public foldings, will be featured in an exhibition at the Hillstrom Museum of Art titled Many-Fold Manifolds: Engineered Origami by Robert J. Lang, on view from February 14 through April 21, 2011.
Lang, whose Ph.D. in Applied Physics is from the California Institute of Technology, has been an avid artist of origami, the art of paper folding, for over forty years. In 2001, he left his career as a distinguished physician and engineer to become a full-time artist. Lang is one of the pioneers of the “cross-disciplinary marriage of origami and mathematics” (quoting the biography on his website). He has published widely on origami and his works have been shown in many prominent museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lang is one of the featured artists in the award winning documentary film directed by Vanessa Gould, Between the Folds (recently featured on PBS’ Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens), which will be shown continuously in the Hillstrom Museum of Art while Many-Fold Manifolds in on view.
The exhibition is sponsored in part by the Rydell Professorship, which is a scholar-in-residence program established in 1995 by Drs. Robert and Susan Rydell of Minnetonka, Minnesota to bring Nobel Conference presenters and other distinguished scholars to the Gustavus Adolphus College campus.