Although it’s not obvious from the weather, spring is here and nothing says that more than the annual Renton Spring Festival.
The event is noon to 5 p.m. Saturday at the downtown Piazza. Sponsored by Piazza Renton, this year’s festival features food, crafts vendors, entertainment and a special demonstration by the arts organization, Combat Paper.
Combat Paper uses traditional hand paper-making techniques to work with individuals who have survived trauma due to a military conflict. The group was started in 2007 by Drew Cameron, an Iraq War veteran, and Drew Matott, who holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in print-making.
The two are based out of Vermont and have traveled across the country over the last four years to bring the project to veteran student organizations, universities, community art centers and veteran centers.
They were at the Compass Center in downtown Renton early this week.
They use old rags or uniforms to make paper in a process used until about 1850. Now the process is done as a kind of fine art or fine craft, Matott said.
Participants will bring an article of clothing that means something to them. They sit around cutting up the clothing, telling the story that’s figuratively embedded within the item, preparing it for the process that turns it into pulp and then to paper.
“So our goal here is not to make paper for us to use. Rather, it’s for the men and women who participate to take and share with their friends and family as a way to kind of embrace their community, embrace their experiences and share it with their friends and family,” said Matott.
Cameron said he’s learned from the sharing he’s heard traveling with the project that “regardless of time of service, deployed or not deployed, branch of service, what have you, that there’s a lot of commonality to the military experience.”
He added the papermaking process and sharing helps erode some of the romanticism or superficial layers around the military experience and gets to the individual stories.
“There’s somethings that kind of rhyme, but there’s also – it’s much more complex than I think cultural narrative typically lends itself to believe,” Cameron said.
Sally DeLeon, a U.S. Army veteran and Renton Compass Veterans Center resident, was at the center earlier this week making paper with several other veterans, Cameron and Matott.
“In a way the art of papermaking has been modernized with emotions that we carry around us,” she said. “I mean this is great therapy. I think that’s why I came back is because I want to be able to feel and be OK with feeling.”
DeLeon said the papermaking project helped her express herself outside of the boxes she fits in as a veteran, mother and even a tenant. She used uniform pieces from “battle buddies” mixed with flower petals she and her two children collected from the Skagit County Tulip Festival to create her paper.
“There are stories behind the uniform, the fact that you can turn it into paper that’s part of your life, that’s simple, right,” DeLeon said. “The memory that you have will continue because you made something new with something old.”
SPRING FESTIVAL AND POKER RUN
WHAT: music, entertainment, 65 arts and crafts vendors and children’s activities
WHEN: Noon to 5 p.m., Saturday
WHERE: in the Piazza (South Third Street and Burnett Avenue)
COST: Free admission, Poker Run requires $1 donation or canned food for the Salvation Army
