Humble paper becomes high art in hands of East Bay origami master
ALAMO -- Around the world, origami artist Robert Lang has many thousands of followers, but those numbers have just been super-sized.
In an homage to Akira Yoshizawa, the father of modern origami, Google tapped Lang to do an origami doodle for what would have been the artist's 101st birthday Wednesday.
"I'm pretty thrilled," said Lang, who incorporated Yoshizawa's designs into the doodle and also wrote an accompanying story. "Yoshizawa's work launched the modern art form; had he not done what he did, I probably wouldn't be doing this thing I love," Lang said.
An artist and physicist, Lang is an origami star in his own right. Experts in the field have called his work expressive, complex, even startling.
Some of his pieces are palm-sized art works of bison, pumas, beetles and other greatly detailed animals and other art pieces. But he is also known for what he calls monumental origami -- mind-blowing, realistic, life-size works done with one massive sheet of paper.