Melissa Louie

When I was a child, I attended a Japanese New Year festival, where a person was showing people how to fold cranes. I took my crane home and unfolded and refolded it dozens of times until I learned how to fold it on its own. From there I continued to explore, although only as a hobby.
It wasn't until I was in a tech career that I rediscovered a passion for origami when I decided to fold origami ornaments for my coworkers for the holidays -- a tradition I kept up for over 12 years, with a new model every year. Along the way I fell in love with geometric origami: first, modular origami via kusudamas; and more recently, tessellations. The geometric purity and the way complexity is borne out of simple units really tickles my brain the right way.