Ep. 53 Working for NASA and Paperfolding Drama Llamas

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Today Milena & Megan cover American aerospace engineer Judith Love Cohen & 20th century Argentinian paper artist Ligia Montoya

Judith Love Cohen

Judith pictured with the Atlas-Able satellite she worked on, 1959

Every now and again Milena covers a person that makes you think ‘Gee, what was I doing when I was their age?’ That’s the case on a few occasions with aerospace engineer, author and occasional dancer Judith Love Cohen. Today Milena profiles how this engineer was one of the few, if only, women in her science programs, the importance of equal representation in careers, and how to pass the time while giving birth (spoiler: solving a math problem).

Ligia Montoya

Crop from cover of Paper Life: The Story of Ligia Montoya by Laura Rozenberg

Today Megan covers our first paper artist, Ligia Montoya. Looking to find an escape from from the ever-depressing news cycle, we jump into the niche community of paperfolding AKA origami.
What we expected to find: carefully crafted objects, inventive use of technique & solitary hours devoted to the artform
What we didn’t expect to find: suicide, unrequited love & professional smack talk

Megan give us the details on the life of this quiet Argentinian artist who would have been forgotten if not for the work of paper enthusiast Laura Rozenberg, who wrote Paper Life: The Story of Ligia Montoya. Much thanks to Laura, who has written the most extensive English language biography of Ligia to date.

Selected Work
Examples of Ligia’s flower designs, instructions to make them can be found HERE
Assortment of designs by Ligia. Most of her paperart was created from small pieces of airmail paper from the post office

As always, music by EeL