Toygami

When I caught up with artist J. Edwards, he was at Michaels, the crafting superstore.

“Yeah, you know, I’m over in the scrapbooking section,” he said, laughing. “There are a lot of tools that I use that are scrapbooking tools for the paper craft, so, yeah, I’m a glorified scrapbooker.”

Three years ago, there’s no way Edwards would have guessed he’d end up in the scrapbooking aisle at Michaels. A graffiti artist and graphic designer for most of his life, the big change from spray paint to folded paper came one Saturday morning while he was playing with a cutout paper doll with his 5-year-old daughter.

“She looks at me and says, ‘This is boring,’” Edwards recalled. “She asked, ‘Why can’t we make our own?’ And, it was like a cartoon where you can see the light bulb popping up over someone’s head.”

Edwards sat down that morning, sketched something out and has pretty much been calling himself Toygami ever since.

Every piece of urban origami he makes starts as pencil on paper. Edwards then scans it into Illustrator, starts with the two-dimensional figure, then builds it out to include tabs that he can fold together to make it 3D.

After he prints out the design, though, it comes down to trial and error. Sometimes the pieces fit perfectly together. Other times the math is wrong and he has to start over.

Edwards lives in the Inland Empire, but he’s in the process of moving to San Diego, where he says people have been more receptive to his work. He currently has some pieces on view at Visual Art Supply (3524 Adams Ave. in Normal Heights) and Kleen House (920 E. St., Downtown), but every now and then, he’ll take one of his characters and leave it on the sidewalk or inside a public building. He still has strong ties to the urban aesthetic of graffiti art, but he says he’s continuing the movement in his own unique way.

“Back when I was doing graff, there were so many people doing it that my voice wasn’t being heard anymore,” Edwards said. “I was looking for something new. For me to fall into paper craft, it seemed like the next step in the evolution.”