Straw bale compositions. Straw figures were redrawn in the Slonim region, as they already very much resembled famous people of Belarus. "At the straw sheaf

Straw Art Festival- one of the most original holidays, which takes place annually in rural areas of Japan. Farming communities in Kagawa and Niigata prefectures put on original exhibitions of giant straw sculptures left in the fields after the harvest.

Perhaps one of the most famous straw sculptures in the world was installed a couple of years ago in the Dutch town of Nieuwerkerk. But the Japanese can boast of a whole zoo: macaques, elephants, turtles and even sharks - you won’t see anyone at the festival.

This year, among the most memorable sculptures, one should note a shark with an open mouth, whose jaws looked really intimidating, as well as a friendly wallaby kangaroo, in the bag of which the children who came to the holiday could sit. Note that even the scary predators in straw guise looked very friendly. In addition, if desired, it was possible to climb a ship and a tank, the sculptures of which were also made by local craftsmen.

Luckily, the sculptures are solidly built, following the same pattern as the thatched cottages. At the base is a wooden frame, and on top it is covered with dried stems. Thanks to this, the audience could feel safe without damaging or breaking the wonderful structures.

Of course, the Straw Art Festival is a wonderful event that is pleasant to visit on a warm Sunday afternoon with the whole family. Positive emotions and a sea of ​​impressions for children and adults are guaranteed! Perhaps the idea of ​​an original holiday can be adopted by our farmers.

"At the straw sheaf,

one by one - kopnishka,

from the heaps - a haystack.

In the life of a rural worker, nothing was wasted, and only from straw, a unique natural material that they just didn’t make: bast shoes, dishes, utensils, and straw hats are known to all peoples who grow cereals.

For a long time, in different parts of the world, there were customs to make figures of people out of straw.

and animals.

Often such figures were used in folk rituals and holidays.

The ancient Slavs celebrated the end of the harvest by placing a female figure of the Mother of Bread on the field,
made from the latest harvested sheaves.

On Maslenitsa, an ancient Slavic pagan holiday for the New Year,
which began on the day of the spring equinox, they burned a straw effigy of Winter at the stake.

Small straw dolls were considered a talisman of the house,
reliable guardians of the hearth.

Straw and now does not leave indifferent human imagination.

Happy holidays are celebrated in different countries with competitions for making funny straw figures.

In the south of England, at the end of summer, there is a festival of straw bears.

For the holiday, men dress up in straw suits.

and, dancing, walk through the streets, begging people for alms.

In the Czech Republic, “straw” celebrations are called “Slamak”,
they are held in the Czech city of Cesky Rai.

Statues are placed around the city,

sculptures,

made from straw

and for children, a funny labyrinth is made from large bales of straw.

Every year in the Latvian city of Salaspils there is a festival of straw figures.

Funny straw animals

fairy tale characters

and cartoon characters

waiting for guests in the National Botanical Garden

city ​​of Salaspils (Latvia)

from February to April.

The organizers of every holiday want to capture the imagination of their guests,

will be remembered for something unusual and hitherto unseen.

And this is not so easy to achieve.

And 56-year-old British farmer Chris Sadler, from Cheshire, UK,
the owner of a local ice cream company even created a peculiar tradition. Every year he creates a giant sculpture out of straw bales.

Chris and his wife Cheryl have been creating monumental straw statues since 1998.

For fun, Chris Sadler built an incomprehensible sculpture for the coming millennium, dumping 350 bales of hay into a pile. The result was a hemisphere, with a diameter of 100 and a height of 15 meters. In all directions, rays protruded from this hemisphere in different directions. What personifies his Millennium Dome (as everyone called him) - even the author himself found it difficult to say.

The 11 meter (36 ft) meerkat monument lifts the spirits of countless people,

who came to look at the straw statue of the animal.

The "Snugnick" rocket he created rises 15 meters above the field,

and surprised tourists are met by a huge straw dinosaur

Photos of the creations of the British farmer went around the world.
Here is a figure called "Angel of the North".

And this is a copy of the Ferris wheel "London Eye"

Windmill that was illuminated at night

A copy of the Jodrell Bank telescope, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the space age. Weighing six tons

A 21-meter (71 ft) copy of the famous Big Ben tower, which is 4 times smaller than the real one in London. It took more than 500 bales of hay, with a total weight of 20 tons.

A real working clock is built into the top of the hay tower, though as a cost savings.

only 2 dials are installed, on the sides that look at the road.

Magnificent straw sculptures are also in Russia

In the city of Bobruisk, residents erected a huge monument to the well-fed Beaver from straw.

The frame of the beaver is wooden. Height about 5 meters

A giant sculpture of an eagle is installed at the railway station in the city of Oryol
and is made of straw, fixed on a wire frame.

Straw figures are also constantly presented in landscape design exhibitions at the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh).

They are made on a wooden frame and trimmed with straw.

Well, and finally:

In China, they built a 90-meter penis out of straw.

The sculpture, located in the Shaman amusement park, was named the Heavenly Column. For the construction of the structure, more than 1800 meters of straw were used, which was wrapped around a steel rod. The sculpture is located on a platform at the top of Oinlong Mountain. Park President Chen Weyan said the sculpture is a totem for the city. A Chinese legend says that a shaman named Evenki gave a cruel ruler a penis-shaped totem so that she would respect men and not kill them at will. After that, the ruler installed a totem on Mount Oinlong, according to East Asia Economic and Trade News.

The director of the Chinese Cultural Association claims that the totem symbolizes the happiness and prosperity of the ancestors.

Some tourists, meanwhile, say that the statue gives them discomfort. However, not everyone. For example, a mother who visited the park with her child said that it was just a statue and it could become a symbol of the park.

How!

Original entry and comments on

Three-meter straw figures - Grandfather and Grandmother - are located at the entrance to the agricultural town of Zhirovichi, Slonimsky district. The compositions on the margins have become a kind of symbol of the holiday of the village workers. Already according to a good tradition, they are installed along the route.

In the faces of the established figures near Zhirovichi, many saw the familiar features of famous people of Belarus - Alexander Lukashenko and the head of the Presidential Administration Natalya Kochanova, writes racyja.com.


When the GS correspondents arrived at the place in order to ask the figures passing by if they really reminded them of famous people, the artist was already changing the images of the straw sculptures - he was painting Grandfather's beard.
One of those present (did not introduce himself) explained to the journalists that the work had not yet been completed and it was desirable that the journalists filmed it when everything was done.
“We still need to attach the hair, then everything will be ready,” the workers explained.
- And who came up with such images, who made them, who installed them? - journalists asked a question.
- This is folk art, such figures from straw are now installed every year near Dozhinki, almost every farm or enterprise. These images were painted by a local resident Vyacheslav Kopytko, he worked as an artist in college, - those who put the straw images in order supported the conversation.
Zinaida Otoka, a worker at the Zhirovichi College, sewed clothes for the figures - a skirt, a scarf, and pants. According to the woman, more than ten meters of different fabric went into everything.

Correspondents of "GS" asked the artist why he is remaking the image and is it true that someone noticed the similarity of Grandfather with the head of state.
I don't know, it doesn't look like me! Here someone blurted out - now redo everything, - the man noted.

Reprinting of GS.BY materials is possible only with the written permission of the editors. Details

The story of how a farmer became a sculptor began with Mikhalkov's film. “I looked and wanted to rehabilitate the village,” says the founder of the straw museum, a resident of the Grachevsky district in the Stavropol Territory, Roman Ponomarev. His melon is now surrounded not by stuffed animals, but by real art objects. The bear was built first. According to Roman, they did it in 40 minutes.The sketch was an ordinary picture from the Internet, and the materials were straw, pegs, ropes and a spray can of paint.

The bear became the first straw figure Photo: AiF / Olga Oblogina

Opposite is another installation: boots sticking out of a straw massif. Rural response to police officers, Roman jokes. And he explains: this is a walled up thief who climbed on the melon for watermelons.

The next exhibit is a straw bull. The chief architect, as the 17-year-old future programmer Alexei Kharin is now called on the farm, made him, like other figures, with his own hands. It’s more interesting than doing watermelons, only now the work does not become less.

The young man made the bull for two days. It didn't happen right away. In the process of creativity, either an elephant or a camel came out. As a result, the straw figure was nevertheless brought to the condition of a bull.

By the way, a real zoo is also adjacent to the straw one. There is an aviary with ostriches that you can feed with grass.

There are also decorative birds: Hamburg and Chinese roosters, chickens, guinea fowls and pheasants.

Another attraction is already in the product line: triangular watermelons. They are grown in special forms of plexiglass.

“I did each one myself,” says Roman. The glass is eight millimeters thick, otherwise it does not stand up - the watermelon is stronger. Each such box on melons is carefully covered with straw so that it does not burn out. Such watermelons must be turned over every day, which, of course, affects the price. A triangular-shaped watermelon costs 5,000 rubles.
“About 50 watermelons we throw away to get one! Therefore, the cost of one such watermelon came out to us 3800 rubles, - says Roman. - They are very difficult to grow, most of them rot. In total, for the season we are counting on about fifty successful such watermelons.

An expensive souvenir - they call these watermelons on the farm. And they immediately say: this is not for food. You can use it as a decor, give it to someone for a wedding, but in terms of taste, such watermelons are clearly worse than ordinary round ones.
All these wonders of the field quickly find an audience: on a day off, the melon workers say, they counted a thousand visitors near the sights. Yes, and felt in terms of revenue: sales of watermelons and melons increased by 15%. Only now the buyer is still losing to these collective farmers in terms of culture, the workers at the melon plant say. First, they don't appreciate it. Second, they spoil.

“Some people fit - just pull, tear off! Yesterday, the head of one figure was torn off. Of course, we screwed it on, but it’s unpleasant, we don’t like this attitude, ”says Alexey.
However, not only to cultivate, but also to cultivate, they will continue on melon. There are plans to build something monumental. So that the word "collective farmer" sounds like a compliment.

Every year, unusual compositions made of straw appear in the fields in Belarus in front of Dozhinki. The idea is not new: straw figures can be found in Germany, Poland, and even Japan. Belarusian agricultural creativity pleases motorists.

Many cannot pass by, stop cars and take pictures against the background of straw people, cows, roosters and tractors. To be honest, we couldn't resist either.

Straw figures of a man and a woman in national costumes near the village of Ilyanskie Khutory in the Vileika district of the Minsk region.

As a rule, straw figures reach a height of several meters and can be seen from afar. The theme of compositions is usually devoted to agriculture. You can meet cows, and roosters, and combines with tractors. However, on the roads of the Myadel and Vileika regions, there are also national motifs in the straw art. Imagine a pair of giant Belarusians in national costumes in the middle of a field. However, why imagine, if our photo report clearly demonstrates this.

Castles are also a favorite theme of rural designers. A couple of bales of straw, windows and a cardboard roof - consider the castle ready.

When you see such compositions, you think with regret that they are short-lived and sooner or later will disappear from the field. Until the cold sets in and the heavy rains begin, there is still time to capture yourself against the background, for example, of such a giant bear.

If you, like us, are not indifferent to agricultural creativity, then send photos of this year's straw figures with a note where they are located and an indication of the authorship of the photo by e-mail [email protected] We will definitely make another photo selection.