Amy Lopez Nayve, Paper Engineer

Here is a true to life story about following one's passion and how it can lead to a full and blessed life. Amy Lopez Nayve, Paper Engineer and entreprenuer, has stories to tell. She unfolds and pops it up one paper craft and moveable book at a time. Having achieved recognition and awards for her pop-up books, Amy shares with us where she began, where she is right now and where she plans to go.

It is one exciting journey and I am personally honored to have seen slivers and glimpses of Amy's talent grow into the amazing artist that she is!

Amy with David Carter, Pop-Up Book Master

How did you become a Paper Engineer?
I grew up with pop-up books. When I was little, my grandparents would send me pop-up books from the US. I loved to peek between the pages and try to figure out how they worked. Eventually, I learned how to build them myself. I didn't think of it as a career path back then; I just liked making pop-ups for my school projects. It came as a natural complement to my abilities. But I loved the art form so much that I decided to utilize it wherever I could throughout my college years. The peak of this happened when I designed my portfolio as a pop up book, which I call "Popfolio". This is the same book I entered into the international competition for the Emerging Paper Engineer Prize 2018 held by the Movable Book Society. It went on to win an Honorable Mention, and I even got to show it to big-name paper engineers at their biennial conference. I was inspired to pursue paper engineer as a career after I felt so at home with the people in the industry. It felt like I had found my place in the world.

What are the must-have traits and characteristics of a Paper Engineer? I say this a lot when I hold workshops: "Paper Engineers are some of the greatest storytellers in the world." This is because they have all the skills needed to capture a moment in a story and turn it into a beautiful piece of art which can then be experienced by the reader. Keyword here is "experience" - one common quality paper engineers have is the ability to involve the reader in the show. Our work involves a heaping cup of geometry, a bowl of physics, and a generous sprinkling of storytelling. To paraphrase collector Ellen Rubin aka The Pop-Up Lady, Paper Engineers are puppetmasters who hand the strings to the readers. The readers make everything come alive.

Where do you go from where you are now?
As I'm writing this, I'm actually getting my business registered at city hall.

Some things that I'm looking forward to:
- going to Singapore to meet a fellow paper engineer. We are going to collaborate on a pop-up book.
- making my own pop-up book. I've been percolating for months with ideas for a pop-up book about Philippine mythology. I'm definitely going to do that.
- holding more workshops

For more information on Amy Lopez Nayve and the workshops she conducts visit her FB Page, Pumapapel Crafts. Come back to the blog for details of her workshop this coming November 10, 2018. I will be posting links and posters this weekend.