The Wara Art Festival in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture is a showcase for art, but it’s also a harvest festival. Giant sculptures are constructed of rice straw leftover for this year’s rice harvest.
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.
In this video, watch students from Musashino Art University build one of the sculptures for 2017.
