When you’re spiraling, you’re in your head (head is a spiral). The more you think, the worse it gets. The problems are real, but they explode out of proportion (spiral is out of proportion for the rest of the body). Sometimes, all you can do is sit on your hands (fig. left) or hug your knees (fig. right) and hope it passes.

A commenter wrote, “cool pun,” on a forum post I made for this piece. The work and title are a pun, I won’t deny that, but that’s missing the point. My goal is to explore the figurative from the lens of the literal. Idioms and phrases only hint at a truth, often because it’s easier to soften the black and white with shades of gray. I turn the figurative literal as a way to fully realize the sentiment in those words and explore how they make us feel.

Acknowledgements: thanks to Brandon Wong for letting me beta-test the ExplOri software that helped me come up with this structure. This work was inspired by Spiral by Tomoko Fuse.

Individuals

Crease Pattern: