These fanciful gourds, custom-designed for The Globe by a talented group of carvers, are all the inspiration you’ll need to kill it this weekend.
Jason Carter
Soapstone carver and painter, Edmonton and Canmore, Alta.
It’s a little hard to believe that a guy who carves 200- to 300-pound pieces of stone every day would never have tackled a pumpkin in his life – but it’s true of Alberta soapstone carver and painter Jason Carter. “I have carved just about every type of stone: soapstone, wonderstone, alabaster, chlorite. I’m even tackling marble, some of the hardest stone to carve,” he says. “But the pumpkin – I underestimated the pumpkin.” Its thick skin yet somewhat delicate form led Carter to eventually turn to power tools and pliers to create the crisp, clean lines that defines his art. “I am heavily influenced by my surroundings, nature, the environment and its inhabitants and currently the wolf.” He finished the piece with spray paint – silver on the outside and red on the inside to make it pop. “I love colour,” he says.
Time to complete: A full day
Tools used: Kitchen knives, spoons, paring knives, power tools, pliers and spray paint
Delegated tasks: None
Cop his design if you’re: A confident carver
One more trick: If you’re keen to bring a specific vision to life, try making a few rookie mistakes with a tester pumpkin first (“I warmed up my skills with a practice pumpkin just so I would know what I was in for”).
Milan Lukes
Junior-high student and farmer, Winnipeg
He’s 13 years old, but he recently bested a slew of farmers in a pumpkin-growing competition at the Roland Pumpkin Fair, taking both first and second place for his pumpkins, weighing 611.5 kilograms and 582.2 kilograms respectively. In short, Milan Lukes knows a thing or two about pumpkins. That’s why it took him nearly as long to find the perfect one as it took him to carve it. He eventually chose a warty, irregular gourd “to make things more interesting textured,” he says.
Time to complete: An hour for carving and touch-ups
Tools used: Black washable marker, kitchen knife, drywall cutting knife and a wet towel
Delegated tasks: Capturing the final result (“Our best friend and photographer, Douglas Little, took the photo.”)
Cop his design if you’re: An intermediate carver (the rough textured walls can be hard to work with)
One more trick: When the pumpkin skin is particularly thick, start with a bigger, sharper knife for overall slices, then switch to a smaller blade for the details.
Eugene Ong and Suzy Schlotzhauer
Owner and manager, Knife, Toronto
“Knives, of course.” That’s what Eugene Ong, owner of Toronto specialty Japanese blade store Knife, explains was the inspiration behind his store’s design, hand-crafted by store manager Suzy Schlotzhauer. Perhaps the most distinctive element of the creation is the orientation of the pumpkin itself, which is set on its side to incorporate the stalk into the face (a hole in the back allowed for the usual removal of the innards) and allow space for a single dramatic – and apropos – prop: a Masakage Yuki Santoku knife stabbed into the brain. “We were looking for something original and thought that it would be fun,” Ong says. “And, of course, we had to include a knife.”
Time to complete: Hour and a half
Tools used: Mcusta pocket knife, X-acto knife, Wilton plastic cake-decorating tools, skewer and a Masakage Yuki Santoku knife
Delegated tasks: Schlotzhauer took on the whole execution (“With a newborn at home and full-time work I needed someone else to do it,” Ong says. “And Suzy loves Halloween.”)
Cop their design if you’re: A beginner
One more trick: This pumpkin packs a melodramatic punch, especially with some mood lighting, but it is best kept indoors – to protect the knife – and out of the reach of trick-or-treaters.
Donald Watt
Artist and member of Snowcarver, Team Canada Yukon, Whitehorse
As a medium, snow and pumpkins are about as dissimilar as it gets, but that doesn’t mean artist Donald Watt hasn’t mastered both. “The pumpkin itself tells me the kind of face I’ll end up with,” says the competitive snow carver. “As I work, the expression comes alive for me. I do not plan the sculpture beforehand other than to first mark out the brow line. From then on, it is the pumpkin that makes the face.” Watt prefers taller pumpkins, ideally with some vine still attached; in fact, he says that sometimes finding the pumpkin can be the hardest part. “I want them to be heavy and not sound hollow when I tap them. I need a thick wall of pulp to work with. Other problems arise if the pumpkin is not very fresh. The pulp tends to break down and become stringy. This makes it hard to carve any detail.”
Time to complete: Two to three hours
Tools used: For sculpting clay – “You want a tool that smoothly removes the pumpkin pulp in a controlled manner.”
Delegated tasks: “I find carving pumpkins is a solitary job for me. I do all the work from start to finish. That includes the cleanup.”
Cop his design if you’re: A confident carver
One more trick: Watt sculpts the face of the pumpkin first, then cuts a 10-centimetre hole in the back to remove the innards. Then he inserts a light bulb. “Because I do not carve right through the pulp of the pumpkin, the light shows up at different strengths depending on how deep I cut at any one place.”
Jay Merriott
Student at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax
Jay Merriott worked at a big bank in the United States before coming to Canada to explore his passion for art (“I love Canada so far and feel very much at home here,” he says). “This was my first real attempt at sculpture and carving,” says Merriott, a first-year student at NSCAD currently exploring the different media available to him for further study. “The theme is that nothing lasts forever,” he says. “And to recognize the good times and happy moments, because they come and go – just as these sculptures will not last long.”
Time to complete: Five hours to carve both
Tools used: Tools for sculpting clay
Delegated tasks: None
Cop his design if you’re: A confident carver
One more trick: Create a dynamic scene on your porch – or table – with multiple pumpkins interacting.
John Vickers
Festival producer and pumpkin artist, Victoria
And now for something a little different: John Vickers has been making intricate creations out of polyurethane pumpkins from craft stores for years; his original display was for a front-lawn fundraiser, and he found that real pumpkins were turning to mush too quickly. “The polyurethane pumpkins take about twice as long to carve versus real pumpkins but the benefit is they last,” Vickers says. “My current display of about 550 pumpkins has carvings going back as far as 14 years.” His style was inspired by photography: He essentially carves a flipped photographic negative into the face of the pumpkin so that when it’s lit, the photograph re-emerges. And for those unwilling to give up the real pumpkin experience, Vickers has a suggestion: “If your carving begins to shrivel or sag, simply immerse your pumpkin in a bucket of water overnight and it will return to its original design and last for several days.”
Time to complete: 45 minutes to several hours
Tools used: Specialty saws, a knife and small scissors
Delegated tasks: Vickers uses digital software to create the designs; meonapumpkin.com, for example, helps him transform a photo of a face into a stencil and then tweak and resize as needed.
Cop his design if you’re: An intermediate or confident carver (depending on the complexity of the design)
One more trick: When transferring a pattern onto the pumpkin, tape the piece of paper onto the face and poke holes along the lines. Then remove the paper and rub flour all over the face to make the dots stand out.