JW: Tis the season for pumpkin-- everything. So after lighting a pumpkin spice candle, and enjoying that pumpkin spice latte and some pumpkin snickerdoodles-- maybe you want to take on the fun project of carving a pumpkin! I’m Judy Wagley, this is “From the Ground Up!” Patrick Harrison is the “Lord of the Gourd,” and he's here to give us expert tips on carving spectacular squash. Thanks for joining me today, Patrick.
PH: Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.
JW: Lord of the gourd. That's a very modest title.
PH: Well, I started out as the “Pumpkin Bumpkin.” And then one day I was doing a show at a retirement home, and this 90-year-old woman tugged on my sleeve. And she said, “You know that name is just not cool.” So I figured, if a 90 year-old woman tells you, you're not cool, you're not cool. So the “Pumpkin Bumpkin” died that day, and the “Lord of the Gourd” was born.
JW: That's great. Now-- when I carve out a pumpkin, I do a few triangles for the eyes, nose and mouth and call it good. But the work you do is--it's just incredible. And folks can see some examples on your Facebook page. Let's get down to some basics though. There are pumpkins, which are squash, in all shapes and sizes and varieties. Are some better than others for carving?
PH: Absolutely. And my favorite personal ones aren't actually pumpkins, they're Hubbard squash. But pumpkins are great too. But what I look for in something you can sculpt, is you want something that's going to be firm enough for the knife to do some detail work. But you don't want it to be too hard that you're horsing the knife to go through it. So when I'm doing my pumpkin selection, what I do is-- I call it the thumbnail test. I'll take my thumbnail, and I do it on the bottom of the pumpkin so I don't mar the pumpkin. And if you can break the skin with your thumb nail, that's a pumpkin you want, because the knife is going to go through it just fine. If you can't do that, you probably going to want to look for another one because you're going to be horsing your knife. And that's when you're going to slip-- and when you're working with knives slips are never good.
JW: That's really true. Now a Hubbard squash-- you see them at farmer's markets maybe. They're those sort of big sort of gnarly bluish-colored things that almost are like turkey-shaped.
PH: Exactly. And they also come in gray. And the thing I like about them is no two are alike. They’re like snowflakes, they're all going to be a little bit different from each other. And so they just inspire me with all those different shapes. And that's what I look for, for something to carve. I rarely do your perfect round pumpkin because they just don't inspire me like the other ones do. Some of these have such neat shapes that the faces are already there. When I look at it, I just hold the knife and help it come out.
JW: A little bit like Michelangelo did with his blocks of marble.
PH: Exactly. But his last little longer than mine.
JW: So in other words, you're saying the pumpkins or squash or whatever-- they choose you.
PH: Exactly. It's really a Zen thing for me, when I go to a pumpkin patch, I just kind of clear my mind and walk around. And it seems like whenever I stop and I look down, the perfect pumpkin is right in front of me.
JW: So we get our perfect pumpkin or squash home. And what's the next step? Do we need special tools?
PH: Well, that's a good question. Because we get so stuck on there's only one way to do this-- to do the triangle face and gutting a pumpkin thing. And there's so many different ways to do it. But as far as tools go, there's no rules to that. It's whatever you're comfortable working with. My primary tool is an Exacto knife and then paring knives and I use some clay tools. But I tell people just clean out your junk drawer, you probably have everything you need at home already. And if not, like maybe the most you need to go out and get some clay tools. And you can get a set of those for under $15 at any craft store.
JW: Now you don't hollow out your pumpkins. You carve right into the pumpkin. But for folks who want to hollow out their pumpkin for Halloween, and put a light inside-- the debate here-- do you start at the top or the bottom?
PH: As far as the hole cut in? That's the one thing I keep stressing-- no rules to pumpkin carving. You can go from the bottom, you can go from the back, you can go from the side, you can go from anywhere you want to-- whatever works for the shape of the pumpkin, you're not doing it wrong. If you're making it up, and it's coming out of your imagination, you're never doing it wrong unless you cut yourself.
JW: That's wonderful advice-- and very inspiring too! So once we get our pumpkin, we have our tools and we get our ideas, and we're carving away and not cutting ourselves-- how do we make that pumpkin lasts longer?
PH: There are ways you can make it last longer. But you do have to remember one thing-- you're still carving something that's perishable. So that's why I never give them names because it's just too traumatic for me, because they're not going to last. But I tell myself, if they end up in compost, they never really go away because they come back as another pumpkin eventually. But as far as making them last, first off, if you're going to just carve it and set it outside, make sure you're putting it in the shade. Somewhere cool and out of the sun. Sun and wind are big enemies of pumpkins. Now there's ways to preserve them, but they're still never going to last. The one that I hear a lot, and I absolutely hate it, is people will say to spray or dip them in bleach. Please don't do that. And the reason being --most of these pumpkins are gonna end up as compost somewhere. And if you're putting toxic chemicals in it, and then setting it out somewhere, critters are going to eat that. So don't do it. Vinegar will work, you can spray vinegar. And keep in mind, these are just temporary things. It's going to go on no matter what, you're only going to buy yourself a few days. But spraying them with vinegar, you'll get some extra time. Sometimes I rub mine with Vaseline, and that's just keeping the air off it and keeping it nice and moist. And you want to keep them somewhere cool, keep them out of the sun. If I do one the night before a show, sometimes I'll even spray Pam cooking spray on it. And then I just wrap them up in Saran Wrap until I need to display them.
JW: Well that's a great idea. But you're right, they are vegetables. They're not gonna last forever.
PH: No, but we have a chance to make them shine and let them show off a little bit before they do go. So they get to go out and style.
JW: Yes. And as you mentioned, you try not to get too attached to any one.
PH: It's kind of traumatic sometimes. And it sounds like I'm kidding, but I'm not. Sometimes one will just affect me for some reason. And that's the thing-- when I do a show, part of the deal is whoever I carve for keeps everything I do. So I know that all this artwork I do every day, I'm never going to see it again. So that's why I don't give them names. I let the kids give them names, but I won't do it.
JW: Patrick as Lord of the Gourd, do you have any other words of wisdom for us on “From the Ground Up?”
PH: Yes, if you're going to do this-- be original. If you've never worked with the knives before, don't try to carve something you can't. Don't say you're gonna carve Frankenstein, because it's probably not going to look like Frankenstein. And you're gonna get mad because you’ve just turned it into work. And now you're frustrated. Let the pumpkin tell you what to do. Make it up as you're going along. Because if you're making it up, and it's coming from your imagination. And you are never ever ever doing it wrong.
JW: Thank you for that. And thank you for all of your expert advice here on “From the Ground Up!” Patrick Harrison is Lord of the Gourd. Thanks for joining me today. Patrick, do you mind if we continue our conversation?
PH: That's what I'm here for.
JW: Your work is so original and so whimsical and so detailed. Where do you get your ideas?
PH: Well, my art background is in cartooning. And when I'm doing a pumpkin basically, I'm just drawing a cartoon, but I'm using a knife instead of a pen to do it. Um, as far as my ideas go, 90% of the carvings I do, I don't have an idea before I start, I'm just making it up as I go along. I start with the eyes, or nose --and I just let the pumpkin tell me what to do.
JW: So you don't draw anything on a piece of paper first.
PH: No, I don't. But you know, it's totally okay if people do this. Just remember, this is my process of doing it. Yours might be totally different. If you want to draw something on there. It's perfectly fine. Remember what I keep saying no rules, no rules! Forget about just having to do the traditional triangle! And tell you the truth--now I'm not saying this to be funny-- I am terrible at them. I was born with very shaky hands. And that's something that's hindered me, In my younger days at least. I got teased a lot for it. But because I had shaky hands, I became a cartoonist instead of a regular artist. Because when you're drawing cartoons, you don't have to do straight lines. You don't have to do perfect proportions. You're just making it up. And I transfer that to my carvings. I don't make them look like anything. I just make it up as I go along. I have no idea what it's going to look like until I'm done with it.
JW: How did you get started doing this?
PH: My family used to own a motel in Traverse City, we owned the Best Western. And my mother was the artist in the family, not me. And every Halloween, we just had a fun little contest to see who would come up with the weirdest idea for a pumpkin. And it was the night before, and I was working on a pumpkin quite late at night, and I slipped with a knife and I cut a big gouge out of it. And I thought it was ruined, but it was the only pumpkin I had. So I thought--I'm going to try to save this thing. So I started playing around with a knife and smoothing out the gouge line, and I stood back and looked at it. And for the very first time-- I saw a human face in it. It looked just like the guy who worked at 7-11 across the street. And so I sold it to him. Yeah, he loved it! It did it look just like him and I gave it a beard-- I went out and found pine needles and gave it hair and mustache and beard. And it worked really well.
JW: Oh fun. Do you grow your own pumpkins?
PH: I used to. I don't anymore because I carve watermelons in the summer now. So I'm on the road all the time in the summer, so I just don't have time to tend to a garden these days. But it's kind of neat. Over the years doing this, I've met a network of farmers across the state. So I always know I'm going to be able to re-supply myself when I'm on the road. And over the years I've made really good friends with the farmers.
JW: So when you're on the road, you can call them up and say, “Hey, it's the Lord of the Gourd. I'm on my way!”
PH: Pretty much. And I also tell them to because they know what I'm looking for. I want your mutant pumpkins. I want the rejects. I want the pumpkin that grew next to the nuclear plant. The weirder, the better. And a lot of those people know me, and they know to set those aside for me.
JW: Yes, Your designs are very original. I don't see that you are carving like a Frankenstein face into your pumpkins. You have these sort of whimsical characters with toothy grins. So it's really your very own style.
PH: And I can do things like the Frankenstein, but I know what I do best. And I know what I like doing best. And I am the Lord of the Gourd. So I get to make the rules, right? I carve what I want to!
JW: Well, this is your super busy season. And thanks again for taking time for us today. What is your schedule like these days?
PH: It's absolutely crazy. On days that I'm not carving, I never have a day off because I have to restock. So if I'm not doing a show, I'm in my car driving around to different farms and getting pumpkins and things like that. And believe it or not, this is a business. So there's paperwork, there's invoices, there's PR stuff. For every hour I'm carving, there's five hours that I have to do something behind the scenes to make it happen. So I'm as busy as Santa on Christmas Eve right now, I have a run of 10 shows in eight days next month.
JW: Now when you say doing a show, what kinds of shows? Where do you go? And what do you do at those shows?
PH: Well, so I do a lot of festivals on the weekends. The main thing I do on weekdays is libraries. Those have been fantastic for me, I do a lot of libraries.
JW: About how many pumpkins would you say that you carve during your busy season?
PH: I would say on average, anywhere from 250 to 350.
JW: Oh my! And do you bring the pumpkins everywhere?
PH: I supply the pumpkins. So I've learned that the hard way, if you let them supply the pumpkins, they'll bring you something you can't carve. They don't do the thumbnail test, so they'll bring me something that's hard as a rock, or it's way too heavy for me to pick up and show it to people.
JW: Well now all of our listeners to “From the Ground Up!” will know. So in the future, hopefully the folks will have done that thumbnail test. And so now everybody is informed.
PH: And I do want to say too, if anyone's listening to this, and you're trying the techniques that I'm telling you, find my Lord of the Gourd page and take a picture of what you've carved. And please send it to me, I would love to see it! And I'll post them on my page for you if you'd like.
JW: Oh, that's very generous, thank you. So you go to the shows and events. And obviously there are a lot of people around and you're carving in front of these people. Do you ever just sit all by yourself somewhere and carve a pumpkin or watermelon or a squash?
PH: I did that last night before I came here. It's a good question. Because when I'm doing a show, I'm under time constraints. And so I have to do something in a certain amount of time. But when I'm like home, in my spare time, I carve just for the fun of it all the time. And I even have two friends who are expert pumpkin carvers and we've gotten together in November. We sit in the guy's barn, we lock all the doors and don't let anyone in, and we just sit and carve for ourselves. Then that night we hollow them out and we put flares in them. And when we're done, we blow them up!
JW: When you're carving all by yourself like that, what's going through your head?
PH: Not much of anything. I'm just free floating. I like doing that like at my house because I've got my favorite music. I've got my dog by my feet and I listen to a lot of Halloween music. My main inspiration is the intro of Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. When I hear that piano music, that just gets me raring to go.
JW: And then you do some Monster Mash?
PH: Oh yeah, and then I just kind of get my groove and start carving. And that's when I feel I do my best work.
JW: What do you do during the rest of the year?
PH: Well, in the winter I'll do squash and gourds. Now I do do gourds because I'm the Lord of the Gourd. But I don't do those at my shows like this because gourds are a lot more intricate, they take a lot more work and a lot of time, so that's not something I can do in an hour. So this time of year, I'm only going to be doing squash and gourds. Come wintertime, once the pumpkins are gone, it'll be squash and gourds rutabagas, things like that. I carve Hubbard squash into turkeys at Thanksgiving, and I carve Santas at Christmas time, and cook them-- so we eat those. Then I take off a little bit of time to let my hands rest and heal. And that's when I work on songwriting, because I'm a musician. And then as soon as I see the watermelons coming out in the spring, I'm back at watermelons again.
JW: And with watermelons, you use the thumbnail test too?
PH: You don't have to do that with watermelon. So you can pretty much tell with those-- just make sure they're not mushy or anything. Now watermelon, so they're a lot trickier to do. There's things you have to be really mindful of, if you're going to do any deep detail work, it's all got to be above the center line, if you do it below the center line, you're gonna run into water.
JW: Center line?
PH: Like the center of the melon itself, if you find the middle of it, if you go down below that, and you cut in, if you go too far, the water's gonna leak out of it, and you're gonna have a mess. And if it's hot out, you're gonna have fruit flies. So you’ve got to be a lot more mindful. One thing I do want to say is because I've been seeing these a lot online, these pictures of these watermelon carvings of like cats and dogs and buildings and stuff, they're AI, they're not real. And I wish they would not do that. Because that kind of takes away from people like me, that really do this stuff by hand. And I mean, the stuff looks incredible. Their photos are, not real, they have been created. So they weren't actually carved by somebody. Oh, they're great to look at, but they're not real.
JW: Well, the other thing I would think that would be difficult with watermelons is they're all so smooth, it would be easier to maybe slip and cut yourself.
PH: That, and the other part of it is they don't inspire me as much as the pumpkins. Because I'm human, I get tired too. And some shows I do, I have to drive three or four hours to get there in the summer. So I do that long drive, I get all set up. I've got all these people around me and I sit down and I'm just staring at this green round ball. And sometimes I'm like, “I got nothing!” But then that's when I let my muscle memory take over. And I just start with the eyes or nose and it'll come out eventually.
JW: Now you mentioned that sometimes it's hard to let some of your characters go.
PH: It really is. Especially if it's a pumpkin I found that I've been carrying around a while, I get attached to these things. And you know, if you asked me when I'm leaving the show, a lot of times I'll just stand in the doorway and turn around and I kind of sigh and then I just make myself go out the door. But fortunately, in the digital age, I can take pictures of everything. Yes. In my early days when we just had regular cameras, you'd take pictures. Then we'd wait two weeks for them, and half of them wouldn’t turnout and so they were gone forever.
JW: Do you think you've ever carved a pumpkin the same way twice?
PH: Not deliberately. I have some designs that I like that I do repeat, but I try to change it up a little bit every time. And the ones who will catch you with that are little kids, not the adults. I'll think I'm getting away with carving something that I did a year ago, but because I do so many shows, I can't remember what I did the year before. And then I'll have a child come up to me and tug on my arm and say, “Well, you did that one last year!” Oh, thank you. Yeah.
JW: Patrick, if you want to give an air-quotes here, “elevator pitch” to someone who is interested in carving pumpkins. What's your elevator pitch? Why?
PH: Why do it? I'd have to say because look at what I'm doing how much fun I'm having! I mean, I get to go somewhere different every day. And every time I walk into where I'm carving, I make new friends. And how many jobs can you say that? I've had many jobs where everyone hates me at the end of the day! I go to a new show and I've got 50 new friends every time I walk in the door. And I absolutely love that part of it. The travel too-- that never becomes old to me because it's fall. It's color season. I'm on a month and a half long color tour. And I get paid to sit down and show off and meet people, and have a good time-- and that's my job!
JW: and bringing so much joy to so many people too, because what's not fun about a pumpkin?
PH: Exactly.
JW: Patrick Harris is the Lord of the Gourd. Thanks so much for joining me today for “From the Ground Up!”
PH: Thank you, and also let me say--Go Chippewas!
JW: Fire Up Chips!
