Chuck Via has lived and worked in Phoenix, AZ for the last 15 years. Chuck has always thought creatively from a young age. While everyone else was looking for a blue crayon, he was wondering why the crayon was blue. He is self-taught and works mainly with paper to create origami. About 9 years ago, Chuck was given a ream of orange paper and didn’t know what to do with it. He found that where he could not draw a straight line, he could fold one and created 270 origami koi swimming across the ceiling of his room. Fast forward 9 years, and he stumbled across the Arizona Origami Society and has been joining them monthly to share, teach, create, and challenge each other with different origami models. Chuck has exhibited artwork at the Found:Re and First Studios. He has an installation of Koi and Orca origami in the Phoenix Center for the Arts. He created 3 chandeliers with 19 different origami models representing 7 different cultures' harvest festivals. The chandeliers have 540 origami models and was created for a temporary installation with The Town of Gilbert Harvest Festival. These chandeliers have been permanently installed at the Cambria Hotel. He is also working with ASU Phoenix Bioscience Core on the ARx5 art installation. He started making the koi artwork to share the calming quality of owning a fish tank, where one would not normally see it. Chuck is currently focused on expanding his portfolio and attempting to convince a studio to let him do a large-scale installation but is happy to share the smaller shadow boxes of tranquility.
