Michael G. LaFosse decided he would be an origami artist in 1971, after reading (and re-reading) a Readers' Digest article by Leland Stowe, about the amazing folded art of Japanese Master Akira Yoshizawa. Michael's uncle Norman had folded paper airplanes with him when Michael was a toddler, and his dad, Jerry LaFosse, was a photographer in the US Air Force. LaFosse burst onto the paper airplane scene in 1984 with his self-published pamphlet, "Aero-gami: F-14 Tomcat Fighter." A biologist by training, he went on to become one of the most celebrated natural history origami artists, making his own handmade papers and creating hundreds of designs now seen in exceptional exhibitions and published in dozens of books, kits, and videos. Richard L. Alexander was caught up in the ultralight aviation craze in the mid-1980s and built a fiberglass / foam / graphite / Kevlar composite, retractable gear, amphibious, canard airplane from a kit (the XTC Hydrolight, designed by Dan Diehl, of Jenks, OK). He met LaFosse in 1988, and together they have produced exhibitions and publications about paper art and origami. Alexander has worked with LaFosse full time since 2003, and since then has made all of the Origamido handmade paper. Alexander also teaches and designs origami, while being responsible for photography, videography, commercial projects and managing the Origamido Studio gallery spaces and exhibitions.
