Making a Rice Straw Animal for the Wara Art Festival

A wooden framework and curved plastic pipes provide a solid structure for ‘knit’ bundles of wara or rice straw, the byproduct of the season’s rice harvest. As volunteers work together to tie and wrap the bundles into place, an oversized straw animal is revealed. It’s one of many specially designed sculptures created for the annual Wara Art Festival (わらアート) in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture. Spoon & Tamago provides some background:

The Wara Art Festival all started in 2006 when the local district reached out to Musashino Art University to seek guidance on transforming their abundant amount of rice straw into art. And in 2008, the very first Wara Art Festival was held. Since then, every year the school sends art students up to Niigata to assist in creating sculptures made out of rice straw. The festivities have ended but the sculptures are on display through October 31, 2017.