Brown bag today: Field biologist and origamist Bernie Peyton
September 11, 2012 •
Don’t miss Bernie Peyton’s UCOP talk, “Origami and Wildlife Conservation: A Field Biologist’s Perspective on Science and Art,” today, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 12 to 1 p.m. in Franklin Lobby 1 Conference Room, sponsored by the OP Staff Assembly.
Peyton’s elaborate origami sculptures are exhibited in permanent collections in New York and California as well as in Israel, Croatia, Japan and Spain. The UC Berkeley alumnus will even bring the paper, so join him and your OP colleagues in learning how to fold a few animals.
Peyton has worked in other media, including oil painting, film, metal and wood, but he says paper, which he first started working with when he was 9 years old, is his perfect medium. With a 20-year career as a bear biologist, he started folding bear sculptures, then expanded his menagerie to include other animals like red-eyed frogs and great horned owls.
“Paper has properties that most closely match what I want to say with my art,” Peyton writes on his website, “which is to encourage people to appreciate nature, and in so doing, use its products in a sustainable manner. Paper looks fragile and temporary, just like the status of the animal populations and their habitat that I studied.”
