My STBX wife and daughter went on a school trip to the Galapagos in April 2024, leaving me alone in the house for a week. They had a great time in the Galapagos despite it being a very regimented whirlwind guided tour that isn’t usually their favorite travel style at all. But according to both of them the wildlife and natural splendor was spectacular and the people were really nice.
Before they left, I told my daughter I might rearrange the living room while they were gone since I had so much free time alone. As she isn’t a fan of big change, she said “Dad, please don’t, I like it the way it is. Instead, how about you just do origami to keep busy. Do a ton of origami and put it all over the house.”
Challenge accepted! I made rainbow color representations of some of my favorite models to match the glassware rainbow mantle display. Some of these I had made already, so it was more about filling in the color gaps with paper I had on hand. My favorite part is the vultures reading books on the ends.
I also made ~350 butterflies using 24 different patterns of flowered paper. I felt it was a good spring motif. Since I was alone for a whole week I spent time watching some loud movies and TV shows and I could crank out around 30-50 butterflies an hour while binging. I watched The Peripheral which is based on a really good book by William Gibson. As usually the series couldn’t come close to doing the book the justice it deserved but had some high points that made it worth watching. However, they changed the ending pretty radically, ended Season 1 on a cliffhanger then canceled the show. So unless you are already a fan Gibson’s work or love near-future sci-fi, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the show. The book is totally worth the read.
For the butterflies, I placed them all over the house on pretty much every piece of molding that was big enough to hold them. You can see some in the photo above the mantle display as well as reflected in the mirror on the opposite wall.
Over the next few weeks our movement in, out, and through the house would create air currents and cause some of the lightweight butterflies to fall from their perches. I started to get sick of picking the same ones off the floor every couple of days and putting them back in place, so I started replacing each fallen butterfly with an origami book made out of matching paper, partially because the books are denser and more stable and partially to memorialize the butterflies fall. My daughter said she really enjoyed how over time it became an active story of the air movement in the house. Doors to the outside, the pantry, the bathrooms, and more frequently used paths throughout the house became more represented by books than butterflies.
I then turned some of the fallen butterflies into a sun catcher mobile to fly again. Despite making a couple of these I still have hundreds of butterflies left. Creating origami mobiles and selling them at craft fairs may be my retirement job someday. There is a mesmerizing quality to how they dance from the gentle airflow of the A/C system in the house. The wooden branches holding the butterflies fell from The Tree Of Skulls, an old dead cedar tree on a point sticking out where the pond, river, ocean, and marsh come together. They have a particularly weathered quality that you only find in nature.
When the sun hits the crystal weights at the bottom of each strand of butterflies, it makes dancing rainbow patterns on the walls
Since dismantling most of the installation I have ~100 books in various flower patterns just sitting around. I have since tagged the books from the project and gave them away or left them in public spaces to brighten someone’s day. I can always make more.