Photo credit: Naomiki Sato
I was both sad and delighted to read this obituary of Eric Joisel, a legendary French origami artist. Sad of course because I’m only finding out about his work now, but delighted to see such amazing creations! He started his career as a sculptor, but threw away all his previous work once he discovered origami. Each piece is made from a single sheet of paper with no cuts. From the article:

To devise the blueprint for a single figure could take him years. To fold one could take hundreds of hours — a very large work might entail a rectangle of paper measuring more than 15 feet by 25 feet, roughly the size of a New York studio apartment. No two figures were precisely alike.
“Origami is very difficult,” Mr. Joisel wrote in English in an introductory passage on his Web site. “When people ask how long it takes me to make a sculpture I say ’35 years,’ because that is how long it’s taken me to get to this level.”

Be sure to check out the New York Times article about Joisel; not only is there a slideshow of Joisel’s stunning work, but you can download a pdf of instructions for one of his simpler creations.