As a real estate agent, Nancy Bjorge makes a living selling houses. But she takes her greatest pleasure building worlds out of much smaller structures.

When the home-buying season slows down, Bjorge escapes to a universe of paper, transforming flat sheets into flowers, boats and abstract shapes with a few skillful folds.

She picked up the basic techniques as a child in China, where her grandmother taught her origami. But she long ago graduated from paper cranes and leaping frogs – a transition underscored in the title of her solo exhibition at the Lawrence Arts Center: “Beyond Origami.”

“My pieces are nothing like Chinese paper folding or origami. People have a picture in mind when you say origami, and immediately they think of the crane,” says Bjorge, 65.

“I’d like to get away from that and really look at my pieces as independent, original creations from me.”

Viewers should have no problem recognizing the uniqueness of Bjorge’s work.

Her latest tangent started at the IKEA store in Minneapolis, where, while visiting her daughter, she spotted the perfect frame for her new series: a butter dish. The silver trays were topped with clear plastic lids, ideal for keeping dust and wandering hands away from delicate paper. Excited, Bjorge snatched up 200 of the dishes.

She brought 50 to the gallery, each filled with a whimsical collection of objects constructed of tiny sheets of folded paper, Q-tips wrapped in colorful wire and beads the size of rice grains. One particularly playful dish features two thread-wrapped chicken bones that look like a pair of animals poised to play.

“I’m so proud of this one,” Bjorge says.

‘Mark of a great artist’

Also new to this show are paper sculptures Bjorge suspended inside clear glass vases, sealed from the top with coated fabric. The magical floating worlds within take on added dimension with filtered light shining through them from a specially made display case.

Bjorge’s latest pieces, especially the butter dish series, hearken back to her experience in jewelry design (she has an MFA in metalsmithing from the University of Wisconsin).

“Each piece by itself is almost very jewel-like,” she says. “The material is different, but the size and the feeling of the pieces is a little bit more delicate, intricate.”

That’s not to say that she can’t also crank out enormous works – at least by folded paper standards.

Among her earlier pieces hanging at the arts center is “Wild Flowers,” which stretches 46 inches square. That doesn’t sound terribly large until you consider that the design called for Bjorge to fold a 2-inch-square flower form more than 250 times to complete the repetitive piece. The result is a stunning, geometric mini-quilt – for looking at rather than sleeping under.

“Her art is absolutely delightful, and I’ve not seen anything like it anywhere,” says Topekan Dave Wilson, former executive director of the Kansas Arts Commission. He has two of Bjorge’s pieces and is anxious to see her new work. “She’s always evolving and changing and growing, and that’s another mark of a great artist.”

Achieving integration

Bjorge came to art relatively late in life. She had her first exhibition in 1998 at Kansas University’s now-defunct Museum of Anthropology.

As a high school student in China, she specialized in math, following that up with a degree in math from the University of Illinois after moving to the United States. But she took a drawing course – her first art class since elementary school – and found that she had a knack for it.

After several years of studying art, though, marriage, family and a “practical” job became priority, and Bjorge packed up her creative work for more than 20 years.

Then, her very energetic sister suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed. Bjorge introduced her sister to drawing, and the activity hastened the healing process. Her sister eventually became a talented pastel artist.

“Then I thought to myself, ‘What am I waiting for?'” Bjorge says. “All these years I’ve been waiting for the right time to do my artwork. So I decided I was going to take time out no matter how busy I am to produce some work.”

Since her first show at KU, Bjorge has exhibited across the country. Dave Wilson hopes she’ll start doing more shows in the area so Kansans might realize what a talent they have in their own backyard.

And arts center gallery director Rick Mitchell hopes parents and teachers will bring their children and students to the gallery this month.

“A lesson in geometry by Nancy Bjorge is enlivened with references to Asia, awe-inspiring attention to detail and a formidable aesthetic sense,” he says. “Nancy shows us what happens when art and science are integrated rather than separated.”