“It’s totally a labor of love,” says paper artist Sara Joyce. The thousands of holiday decorations she makes in her North Raleigh home every year out of fine paper – Easter eggs, Easter bunnies, Christmas trees, and stars – are hard work, but worth it, she says. “The paper is the best part. I love paper.”
A onetime paper-maker and bookbinder, Joyce finds her favorite material all over the world. She has marbled papers from an ashram in India; end papers from a man who makes them for the Vatican in Rome; hand-screened Chiyogami papers from Japan; Lokta paper made of the daphne shrub from Nepal; paper made of recycled garments from India; and traditional Florentine paper from Italy. She gets many papers from the importer Paper Mojo in Wake Forest, then pastes, cuts, and dries them onto baltic birch forms that she has laser cut for her outside of Charlotte. You can start your collection with a stop at Five Points’ Nofo @ the Pig, where her bunnies and eggs have a center-stage display at this time of year.
And if the sight has you hankering for more Easter fun, the City of Raleigh hosts free egg hunts throughout the community on the morning of Saturday, April 8. You can get in the springtime spirit at: Abbotts Creek Community Center, Anderson Point, Brier Creek Community Center, Carolina Pines Community Center, John Chavis Community Center, Laurel Hills Community Center, Lions Park, Mordecai Historic Park, Pullen Park, Roberts Park Community Center, and Spring Forest Road Park. Pre-registration is not required and hunts start promptly at 11 a.m. -Liza Roberts