Origami

"Origami has a universal appeal," says origami artist Gay Merrill Gross. "It's like candy or music. Who doesn't love these things?"

Some intricate origami pieces like those displayed at the conference can take hours to make. Artist Robert Lang enjoys creating origami insects, which he says are among the hardest origami creatures to make.

Artist Eric Tend creates animal forms out of dollar bills. He says dollar bills are easy to work with because they are rectangular instead of square, allowing more creativity in dimension, and they have markings on them that help keep the folds precise. He finds his dollar-bill origami to be an artistic way of tipping at restaurants, too.

The diverse colors and textures of paper allow origami artists to design a wide variety of shapes and figures. The pieces can sometimes be movable and so life-like that they can be used to tell stories.