La chronique de Mélisande*

Paper is a tradition in my family : editing, printing, selling paper, but I did another choice for a profession.
I started origami in 2003, when my 6-years old son asked if I could fold anything other than the fortune teller : I was able to remember the hat, that's all. I started searching the internet, found some models for my son and went on folding for my own pleasure, mostly modulars, boxes and tessellations.

At first I folded from diagrams, then I started devising variations of existing models, then I tried reverse-engineering unpublished models, and finally I found my own path to creation. I was folding on my own until I launched my website in 2005 ; that same year began a fruitful and still ongoing email conversation with Eric Gjerde and later, with other friends worldwide.

While I admire representational origami (animals, insects) for the technical performance I've never been interested in doing this, myself. There is more art, in my opinion, in a symbolic representation than in an exact, quasi-photographic one. Abstraction opens door to imagination, figurative art is fencing it in the real. Yet the real world is a wonderful source of inspiration : I created my first tessellations from patterns I've seen on old church floors in Rome. More recently I designed some floral bowls after real flowers in my garden. My latest obsession is working on cupolas of an old mosquee in Toledo, Spain.

I'm not claiming my art to be only a product of my own genius, nor have I proprietarian pretentions to it : many of my ideas actually come from friends of mine and I'm happy when someone else find my work inspirational. It isn't origami until you share it, according to my friend, Philip Chapman-Bell.
Art is a way to abolish time, distance, and a consolation to our mortality.