A Festival of Paper

Israel is really good at festivals. There are beer festivals, food festivals, music festivals, you name it. When a friend told me that she'd heard something on the radio about a paper festival in nearby Rehovot do you think I hesitated? No, I practically ran there, with the youngest son in tow. It was fabulous!

The Paper Festival was the first festival of its kind in the country. It had paper art, paper street performers, paper fashion, paper workshops for the kids and more. We saw beautifully designed furniture and a giant castle made from carton, and sat on seats made from bundles of cardboard boxes when we needed to rest our feet. The festival was also keenly promoting recycling and aimed to increase public awareness of the need to recycle materials.

There were dozens of artists exhibiting their work. My absolute favourite by far were the gorgeous paper flowers made by Tami Vardi, above. Her flowers were dotted around the park where the festival took place and her table overflowing with flowers was, in my mind, the absolute highlight of the festival. Can you tell how much I loved it? My son had to practically pull me away.

Avi Sevilya's sculptural creations were simply breathtaking. His webpage tells me that he normally works with papier-mache, combining traditional techniques and modern material. The works he displayed at the festival were created from rolled paper, above, and looked rather like alien life forms had just landed in the park. They were simply incredible.

There was plenty of papier-mache art, admittedly some better than others. These seated figures, above, using plastic garden chairs as a base, were just wonderful, as was the delicate oversized quilling, below. The youngest son and I watched in fascination as a group of actors turned themselves into utterly convincing paper monsters.

It was a truly wonderful evening, full of noise and colour, and of course paper! What more can a girl who makes papercut art need?