a tribute to Klimt’s The Kiss
© Maniac Pumpin Carvers

Creative Expressions for Halloween

Most people may take a break from their everyday jobs to go on vacation. Marc Evan and Chris Soria use their time away to, as they say, “get messy with some pumpkins.”

The Brooklyn-based childhood friends pause their 11-month art careers to spend every day in October working until early into the morning carving, cutting, and hollowing out hundreds of orange gourds as part of their seasonal business, Maniac Pumpkin Carvers.

Evan explains, “Part of the fun for me is seeing what can be done in a pumpkin because it is this new medium. We’re constantly finding new things and pushing the envelope.”

for Day of the Dead
© Maniac Pumpkin Carvers

Becoming Carvers

The friends’ passion for Halloween started during their high school days, when they created a haunted house to scare the kids in the neighborhood. Soria recalls, “We were scaring their parents, actually. It was a pretty fantastic haunted house.”

In the Octobers that followed, they’d take pumpkins to their restaurant jobs to carve during the slow times. Word was spreading that the duo could carve up some pretty good jack o’lanterns.

Then the New York Yankees were in the World Series, and everything changed.

Soria and Evan were asked to carve 50 Yankees jack o’lanterns for private boxes around the stadium. That was the “Oh, I see” moment of their careers: they were now professional pumpkin carvers. Soon they had a web site, an official business, and a lot more pumpkins to carve.

for Game 1 of the 2009 World Series,
commissioned by the NY Yankees
© Maniac Pumpkin Carvers

Tools of the Trade

Soria and Evan specialize in two types of pumpkin carving: creating lanterns and sculpting figures. For the first type, they shave layers off the outside of the pumpkin, hollow it out, and light it from within, like the World Series pumpkin above. For the second type, they sculpt the pumpkin into three-dimensional shapes like the piece below.

Old Man
© Maniac Pumpkin Carvers

Their tools come from hardware stores and kitchen supply shops. While they admit that the thin saws and plastic scoopers from grocery store carving kits are actually pretty useful, most of the tools they use are meant for other things, like cutting linoleum or shaping ceramic pots. And they are all pretty sharp.

Evan shares, “You need to have a lot of concentration, a lot of focus, a lot of patience while you’re working. We’re using very sharp tools. One slip could be the end of the season for us.”

A Pile of Pumpkins

Because pumpkins don’t last forever, the team has to carve a pumpkin within 24 hours of when it is needed. And, of course, most Halloween jack o’lanterns are needed at just about the same time. So it’s a busy month.

Evan explains, “Last night we were carving until 7am, which is kind of usual for this time of year. The carving itself can take anywhere from one hour to six hours. It depends on the complexity of the design and how much caffeine we’ve had.”

Soria adds, “Sometimes we do a couple of pumpkins in a night. Sometimes we do 20, 30, 40 pumpkins in a night.” They carve up several hundred pumpkins for the season, this year including a 1,800 pounder at the New York Botanical Gardens’ Haunted Gardens and a 1,000 pounder at Coney Island’s Luna Park.

a tribute to Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are
© Maniac Pumpkin Carvers

The pair realize that their pieces won’t be around for long. In fact, they often compare pumpkin carving to ice sculpture. They note, “We easily get lost in the details, spending hours upon hours trying to get all the details just right. Pumpkin carving requires a lot of patience, a love for the medium, and the acceptance that the beautiful work you’ve created will soon decay and become compost.”

They have learned a few tricks to keep their work from deteriorating too quickly: spritzing the cuts with diluted lemon juice, coating them with petroleum jelly, refrigerating the carving, and submerging the pumpkins in cold water baths.

One trick that does make the pumpkins last: they always take photos of their work.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night for the Museum of Modern Art
© Maniac Pumpkin Carvers

The Future

The team has accomplished a lot over the years. They won Food Network’s “Halloween Wars,” they have created pumpkins for art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, and they have carved for some of their favorite musicians and sports teams. They also have been able to travel around the country to display their skill.

So is there anything they still dream of?

To carve pumpkins for the President at The White House!

Now it’s your turn . . .

Watch this video to see Evan and Soria carve out their creative expressions.

If the video doesn’t display, watch it here.

VIA CNN and Brooklyn Review.

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