Arnold Drake World is a talented paper artist who sits at a communal table at the cafe in Portland’s legendary Powell’s City of Books and turns paper napkins and towels into “botanically correct flowers” with many flourishes and grace-notes.
This two minute documentary captures his manifest and deep satisfaction with his work and the people who come to watch him perform it. It’s a hell of an antidote to any kind of bad feelings you might be harboring.
Arnold Drake World works some beguilingly simple magic at a communal table in a bookstore café in Portland, Oregon, masterfully folding paper hand towels into ‘botanically correct flowers’. It is a distinctive craft he’s perfected through thousands of iterations over some eight years and, though he’s full of playfulness, he takes every step in the process very seriously, from finding just the right papers towels, to making the precise creases, to aiming to impress with each completed creation. With a touch as light and deft as Arnold’s, the US director Riley Hooper offers a tiny, breezy portrait perfectly exuding the joy and exuberance of its subject.
Magic from the mundane – paper towels flourish in the hands of a coffeeshop artist
[Aeon]