Saving Rice Straw Art

SAVING RICE STRAW ART. Rajan Koshy displays portraits, hand-crafted from rice straw, of Mother Teresa and John Wayne. "I want to save an ancient and endangered form of art," says Koshy, who learned the craft from a handful of surviving rice-straw artists during visits to his home town near Trivandrum in Kerala, southern India. Koshy strips foliage from the spines of rice straw, sorts pieces by color, cuts and crafts the straw, and pastes it into scenes with glue from the gum arabic tree. He gets his rice straw from RiceTec, Inc., near Alvin, Texas. Koshy, a nurse at the University of Texas Medical Branch, exhibits art at his rice straw museum in the Novel Ideas Bookstore, Galveston. He customizes specific pieces of rice art on request.

Tom Hargrove