The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum will host origami artist and wildlife activist Robert Salazar, who will discuss origami’s metamorphic nature, 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, at the museum, 113 Harbor Way.

Salazar will explore how harmony is readily accessible, even among origami’s thousands of complex interdependent folds (from a fraction of an inch to several feet long) that might inhabit a simple sheet of paper, to create something beautiful.

Salazar, who lives in Santa Barbara, will introduce the audience to each of his original works on exhibit, their origins, and the stories of the maritime wildlife and people they portray.

“Origami is a unique art form in that any one origami can be transformed into any other by folding alone,” said Salazar. “What’s more, an unlimited diversity of forms can be folded and they all emerge from a single uncut sheet of paper.

“Folded relationships cannot be cut with scissors or appended with additional sheets of paper. All the magic lies in the harmony of many interdependent folds.”

Salazar is a wildlife ambassador with the World Wildlife Fund and founder of Origami for an Interdependent World, an organization whose mission is to inspire action, and raise awareness and funds for wildlife conservation through origami.

He is also an origami deployable structures contractor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he designed the origami patterns for the Starshade spacecraft, whose mission is to assist space telescopes in searching for life among planets orbiting other stars.

Salazar continues at JPL, developing large origami deployable solar reflectors for redirecting solar energy to potential robotic operations in the moon’s darkest coldest water-ice bearing regions.

A display of Salazar’s origami will be exhibited at the museum indefinitely.

Cost to attend Salazar’s talk is $5 for SBMM members, $15 for non-members. Buy tickets at sbmm.org/all-events or 805-456-8747. Doors open to members at 6:15 p.m., non-members, 6:45 p.m.

Lecture series is sponsored by Marie L. Morrisroe.

For more, visit sbmm.org or call 805-962-8404 for details.

— Rita Serotkin for Santa Barbara Maritime Museum.