James Ojascastro
OSGF
Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III
James Ojascastro is an origamist, papermaker, and botanist, with a Ph.D. in ethnobotany at Washington University in St. Louis in collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden. Ojascastro employs a combination of methods – including fiber trait measurements, experimental papermaking, species distribution modeling, and semistructured interviews – to explore the history, biogeography, and conservation of papermaking traditions (especially of Nepal and Vietnam) through a botanical lens. Outside of academia, Ojascastro uses his research background to guide and inform what plants and which processes will yield paper suitable for origami art.