In Collaboration with Many, Many Friends, Especially John Hamilton,
Consists of:

The Setup,

The Exhibit,

and The Exhibition.

The Setup

“Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.” -Sol LeWitt

It started with a question: “What if we covered all 18 indoor floating office pods with paper airplanes?” The project sought to reinvigorate a sense of wonder for the provocative, whimsical University of Tennessee Art+Architecture building (affectionately known as the A+A, or “A-and-A”) that gets a bad rap for its worn concrete. By taking a symbol of disorder and delinquency – a crash-landed paper airplane on the dusty roof of an office pod – and cranking up the dials, it tips over to become an exhibition of order and labor, showcasing the building’s character and the tireless hard work that occurs inside. The project also raised conversations around questioning single authorship, landscape and scale, drawing people from other parts of the university into the overlooked A+A, repetition of the banal to produce something beautiful, and communal effort towards a common cause.

John Hamilton and I assembled a team of 15 art and architecture students, in an effort to bridge the literal and metaphorical gap between the two colleges, to collectively fold 45,000 paper airplanes over the course of six months. Steady daily effort and “folding parties” got the job done (We made it to 42,371). Another 10 students from a range of majors joined the crew to install the project and deinstall it three days later.

Paper A+Airplanes is a work of ar(t)chitecture consisting of over 42,000 hand-folded paper airplanes covering the tops of all 18 floating indoor office pods in the Art +Architecture building. The exhibit was installed for three days in the fall of 2022, just as students were beginning the semester.

The Exhibition

One official proposal, one training manual, two films, eight event maps, ten posters, 19 orange slips, 21 merit patches, two $500 fire watch shifts, and many, many emails – the logistics leading up to and following Paper A+Airplanes are a project in and of themselves. John Hamilton and I, along with Ella Larkin and Lydia Messer, put together a show in UT’s student-run Gallery 1010, showcasing the documents and artifacts that sprang forth during the six-month development of Paper A+Airplanes. The show was selected by Gallery 1010’s directors to exhibit during Knoxville’s First Friday event in October 2023.