Born in Pittsburgh and living in Connecticut, Benjamin DiLeonardo-Parker has an active student of origami tessellations since 2007. He has taught and exhibited at origami conventions and art shows internationally, including Chi Mei Museum (Tainan City, Taiwan), La Escuela-Museo Origami de Zaragosa (Zaragosa, Spain), The Science Museum Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, OK), the Museum of Mathematics (New York, NY), the Japan Information and Culture Center (Washington D.C.), The New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain, CT), and the Cooper Union Gallery (New York, NY). Outside of art, Ben teaches high school mathematics to students with uncommon learning styles, and incorporates origami into his classes as often as he can. Ben approaches his artwork from a holistic standpoint, preferring to view origami as an entry into the vast network of disciplines to which it is connected. This has led him to extend his knowledge of education, engineering, mathematics, CNC fabrication, paper arts, fashion, alternative photography, and other studies. When not teaching high school math, Ben operates a workshop in Essex, CT out of which he creates artwork and runs classes on origami design, He views his practice of origami as cyclical and recursive. Origami is connected to such as vast network of disciplines, each with its own siren’s call. Each flavor, each culture, cycles back onto its own basics over and over, swirling and interacting with previous knowledge, each enhancing the others in some way.
The second edition of Six Simple Twists is a marvelous expansion of the original; like the first edition it provides an introduction to the vast, wide world of origami twist tessellations, with a focus on those based on a hexagonal grid. Through copious and detailed photographs, he shows not just the structure, but how individual folds are actuated, and then how they may be combined in beautiful ways. An expanded selection of photographs of works by worldwide artists provides both inspiration and challenge for the budding tessellator and experienced artist alike. - Robert Lang, author of Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art In this wonderfully expanded new edition, Ben Parker not only describes the basic elements composing his intricate pleated paper artworks, he also unlocks their secrets and logic and teaches their molecules and several examples in a clear format, allowing the reader to create new folded patterns, through both practical and technical approaches! - Alessandro Beber, author of Origami New Worlds This new edition of Six Simple Twists is a tremendous expansion of the first edition. Through the thorough investigation of the foundational elements of origami tessellation, Ben has laid the groundwork for understanding design and application of geometry in paper. The second edition expands and refines the insights of the first with copious illustrations and examples, clear definitions and thought provoking exercises. For anyone fascinated by the geometry of origami, or even curious about place of origami in the field of geometry, this edition is absolutely necessary. - Joel Cooper, Origami artist