…blood, that is. In April, 2012, I was approached by the New Yorker magazine to create an origami mosquito as an illustration for an upcoming article. They knew me in part because I’ve done some origami illustration work for Wired magazine, which is part of Conde Nast, the parent company of them both. (Possibly a 2007 article by Susan Orlean in The New Yorker might also have played a role.) At any rate, they wanted Aedes aegypti, and I was more than happy to oblige.
In fact, getting someone to actually PAY me to design an origami insect is pretty wonderful. (In my entire 11-year professional origami career, I think that’s happened maybe four times.) Timing-wise, I did most of the design while I was on the road to the Asociacion Espanola de Papiroflexia convention (so any AEP-goers who saw me doodling and folding at the convention, that’s what I was working on). When I got back, I had two days between trips, so I pulled out the ol’ Origamido paper and set to folding. Then, since my next trip was to New York, I took it with me and dropped it off at their offices in person. (Which was also pretty cool. I mean, this was The New Yorker. Squee! )
After they did their photo shoot (a few days later), they shipped it off to my exhibition at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, TX, (scheduled to run through August 19, 2012). After that, it will probably return to the studio in Alamo, until the next exhibition calls for it.