Articles

  • Playing with Paper
     My fascination with kites stems from the way they capture light as they move in the wind. My own work has developed primarily in handmade paper, and I have yet to design my own kite, but I recently found a book on my shelf that I’d had since childhood called “Drachen Basteln” (Craft Kites) which I must have purchased or been gifted when my family lived in Germany for a year when I was sixteen.
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  • The Star Farker is Dead! Long Live the Star Farker!
     Introduction by Ali Fujino
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  • Exploring the Victorian Kite
    When you combine a love for nineteenth-century literature with a love for kites, some interesting things happen. As I began researching nineteenth-century kite literature, I realized that there was preciously little material on the subject, even though nineteenth-century stories involving kites abounded.
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  • Tom Van Sant, Renaissance Kite Man
     Tom Van Sant is that type of artist. Professionally trained he has been on the cutting edge of art and design for decades. Like the masters, he works in a way that incorporates everything in his life into his art — his personal life, his professional and technical skills and his passion to know about the world in which he lives.
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  • The Magician’s Oath: A Conversation with Pat Hammond on Magic, Science, and the Wind
    The walk up to Pat Hammond’s house is just as I remember it, a jungle of plants under a canopy of arching oak trees. Statues of lambs carved in stone guard the path leading to her home. At the door, I am greeted by a set of numbers written in rusty old chains laid out on the ground: 3 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5. It’s a chain letter. Literally.
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  • NABX 2012
    For over twenty years, the center of North American land-based kite traction has been the unlikely Nevada border town of Primm. Lured by the funky ambiance and inexpensive hotel rooms in this casino-town, and by the Ivanpah dry lake bed just outside the back door, kite buggy enthusiasts from around the world have been making pilgrimages to Primm ever since kite retailer Fran Gramkowski brought his son Fritz to the desert to celebrate a spring break. Fran and local Vegas retailer and buggy-enthusiast Corey Jensen have held numerous events over the years – each growing ever-bigger – until the North American Buggy Expo (NABX) was created about a dozen years ago. Administered by a committee of devotees led by Floridian dean jordan, NABX is held annually in early April, usually a week before or after North American land sailors and blokarters arrive. (blokart is a compact, land sailing vehicle.)
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  • Kite Making in Haiti
    I have never met Julie Scott in person, but like many stories at Drachen, they begin with a simple encounter through the phone, email, or letter. This particular collaboration started with an earthquake, not a small one, but a large one that has left a small island a disaster. The nature of many earthquakes renders the residents in much despair and tragedy, shattering their everyday living patterns to that of survival. You know all the asks: “Where do we get uncontaminated water, building materials, medical supplies?”
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  • Illuminated Crystals in Flight
    About a year ago, at the Cervia Volante kite festival in Italy, I was lucky enough to bump into one of my favorite kite people; Carl Robertshaw.
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  • The Rocket Kite
    One of the first archival discussions at the Drachen Foundation came from original board member Martin Lester. It was about a rather small and nondescript canvas tube with several surprises inside: a survival kite that was meant to be launched with a flare gun, automatically opening and becoming a rigid, winged-box kite. Additionally, closer inspection of the canvas tube revealed a sophisticated line-management system that encapsulated the flying line in the walls of the tube.
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  • Eddy and Woglom: The Parakite Contribution to the Eddy Kite
    Until a year or so ago, the Eddy kite was a rather boring thing in my eyes. The kite is quite nice for applications and is suitable as a fast made giveaway for children or other people interested in an easy start in kite flying. Apart from this, the kite is not anything special in structure and everyone who knows anything about kites thinks he knows nearly everything about the Eddy kite and its inventor. 
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