Professional pumpkin carver and Pennington resident Curtis May presents his Jacob Marley pumpkin. A Pennington resident, May will be carving for at the aMAZing Pumpkin Carve. Pro tip: practice on small pumpkins first.
More than a decade ago, Curtis May was driving back home to Pennington after a visit to his mother in Lancaster when he stumbled upon the Doylestown Pumpkinfest.
For three straight years after he applied to the event’s pumpkin carving competition, but he wasn’t selected as a participant until his fourth try in 2007. That year, he found his niche by shaving off the skin of the pumpkin to form his design, which was unlike many of the other competitors who used outside objects.
The result was “Hoping Hands,” a design of two intricately carved hands folded into each other. Unable to break into the competition a year prior, his carving won top prize.
May will ply his carving talent at this year’s aMAZing Pumpkin Carve, organized for the first time by the Hopewell Valley Arts Council. The event will take place Thursday Oct. 8 through Sunday, Oct. 11.
The weekend before, Tours des Arts is collaborating with the Arts Council for the first time to produce its eighth annual art tour, set for Saturday, Oct. 3, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 4, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The aMAZing Pumpkin Carve is the Arts Council’s follow up on its popular Stampede oxen exhibit. The event at the Howell Farm will feature more than 20 artisanal pumpkin carvers as they create 50 one-of-a-kind giant pumpkin masterpieces for visitors to view throughout the weekend, Friday, Oct. 9 to Sunday Oct. 11.
The carvers will work to carry out their artistic visions during the day on Thursday, Oct. 8, and the pumpkins are to be unveiled at a preview party, $50, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. that night. A panel will judge the pumpkins during the preview party and winners will be announced at 7:45 p.m.
Giant “prize winner” pumpkins, which weigh between 100 to 150 pounds, will be delivered from a farmer in Lancaster who specializes in giant hybrid variety. Selected pumpkin carvers include well-known Trenton graffiti artist Leon Rainbow, Pennington School art teacher Caroline Hall, Stampede artist Tatiana Sougakova, Sumo Sushi chef Charlie Yeh, Brick Farm Market owners Jon and Robin McConaughy, and professional carver/sculptor Don Campbell.
May, the carving enthusiast who first broke through in 2007 at the Doylestown Pumpkinfest, hopes to add another winning pumpkin to his collection. He has been a teacher of art and sculpture at Pennsbury High School in Fairless Hills, Pa for the past 16 years, and he even teaches lessons in pumpkin carving to his students.
“It’s a great way to learn portraiture,” he said.
He has been competing off and on in the Doylestown Pumpkinfest for the past 11 years. Though his first three years competing were “a bust,” May was awarded top prize for his pumpkins the following two years straight. “Hoping was the breakthrough.
“The hands’ design was very special at this competition, there was absolutely nothing like it,” May said. “The years after that some people started incorporating more of the pumpkin. ”
After winning the competition for his “Hoping Hands” design, May walked away from the competition already brainstorming about what he would do next. He had the idea to design a human heart pumpkin entitled, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which he wanted to ‘beat’ by timing the light with the sound of a heartbeat. May worked all year, talking to lighting engineers and other experts to make his idea work. In the end, it paid off with another win at Pumpkinfest.
Though May hasn’t won the Pumpkinfest competition the last several years, he hopes that this will be his year for a comeback. He doesn’t want to give away too many details about his plans for the aMazing Pumpkin Carve, but May is pleased that an event like this has come to the Hopewell Valley.
The Carve will also feature live carving demonstrations every night, food concessions, games and activities for kids. Entry is $5 for adults ages 10 and over and free for children 9 and under. Event hours are Friday, Oct. 9 from 5 to 9 p.m., Saturday Oct. 10 from 12 to 9 p.m. and Sunday Oct. 11 from 12 to 5 p.m.
Touring behind the scenes
The Tour des Arts the weekend before the pumpkin carve is an opportunity for the residents to interact with artists in their studios and to get an inside look at the inspiration and meaning behind their creations.
“People gain an understanding of all the work that goes into the craft,” said David Miller, executive director of the Hopewell Valley Arts Council.
The tour starts at the Hopewell Train Station, where Arts Council members will be distributing maps. Guests embark on the self-guided tour along West Broad St., stopping to see local artisans at the Ebb Gallery before visiting photographer Karen McLean and weaver Armando Sosa.
Around the corner, at 20 Seminary Ave., is the studio of award-winning jeweler Beth Ann Judge.
She is one of the original founders of Tour des Arts. Those unfamiliar with her studio may know her from The Brothers Moon, where she has worked for 12 years alongside her husband, executive chef Will Mooney.
Eight years ago, Judge had the idea to create the Tour des Arts along with gallery owner Ruth Morpeth and Highland Design Farm proprietor Sean Mannix. The group wanted to introduce residents to the talented artists living in the area and give them a chance to interact with their neighboring creatives.
“The original goal was to bring more people to town and let them see the behind-the-scenes,” Judge said. “I wanted to demystify [the art]. People can walk in the back and see my workshop and I really encourage that.”
Over the past eight years, the tour has continued to grow in popularity with visitors coming from all over the state to meet the artists of the Valley. Though Judge stepped down from organizing the tour two years ago, she still enjoys being involved and opening her workshop up to visitors during the event.
Judge has been designing jewelry ever since she began taking jewelry classes in high school at East Brunswick High. She then attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University, graduating with degrees in Fine Arts and Metals, as well as Art Education. Today, she splits her time between teaching art at the Lewis School and working in her studio.
Judge says that she finds inspiration in organic materials such as a flower, tree bark or a cicada wing. She also enjoys working to re-purpose antique and sentimental items for her customers. Her shop contains displays of her recent creations which include metal bracelets with acrylic accents, sea glass rings, detailed brooches inspired by the curves of different leaves and dandelions.
Though Judge thoroughly enjoys working with metals, her biggest passion is discovering and collecting different stones to use in her creations. She is a certified Graduate Gemologist with a degree from the Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica. After completing the demanding program, Judge can identify any stone or gem and appraise its authenticity. When creating a piece of jewelry, she often begins with the stone, then determines the design.
She has a whole dresser full of stones, and might possibly have too many, she says. Some of her favorites include boulder opals, fossilized dinosaur bone, stones from K2 Mountain in Pakistan, teal needles (which are actually gold in color) set inside quartz and different types of natural geodes.
When she was going through a rough time a few years back, she used stones that she thought would help bring her courage.
“Some people believe — and I believe to a certain extent — that gemstones have healing powers,” Judge said. “I picked stones that I felt like I needed the energy from and I made a piece.
Judge’s clients are often interested in the healing properties of the stones and she customizes stones to their needs.
Judge’s studio will be open to visitors during the tour, and maybe a lucky few will have the chance to see her stone collection.
Continuing on the tour, guests can work their way back to West Broad St. and over to the Morpeth Contemporary Gallery to see the work of Princeton resident and professional photographer Richard Speedy.
Though he has gone on the tour every year, Speedy this will be the first time he is a featured artist on the Tour des Arts. His current exhibition, titled “Relics,” is made up of photos of old abandoned cars in the New Mexico desert. Speedy says that he has always had a fascination with the Southwest and he often finds inspiration in the landscape there.
Though he spends most of the year in Princeton, Speedy also owns a house in Taos, New Mexico, where he does a lot of his photography work. Speedy says his interest in the area stems from his mother who was passionate about the South West and who collected novelties from the region.
“She had a big loom and would leave Navaho tapestries and pottery collected from the Southwest all around the house,” he said.
After working for 25 years in advertising photography and traveling all over the world, Speedy is now choosing to focus more on his own pursuits. Recent exhibitions include a series of nature photos of the New Jersey Pinelands, a collection of nature still-lifes called Flora and a project called Dancing Under the Moon. The latter shows the lives of the Mexican Raramauri people which Speedy spent 10 years getting to know in order to document the community.
For his most recent endeavor, Speedy had the intention to photograph the nature of New Mexico, but he was sidelined after noticing the many abandoned “highway relics.”
“I started seeing these amazing old cars sprinkled around the landscape,” Speedy said. “I was often distracted by splashes of color and form…vehicles that were kept alive for many years until they just wouldn’t move another mile and were left to sit.”
Speedy began searching for these “relics,” finding them in front yards, barnyards and junkyards. He was intrigued by the way the sunlight transforms the paint into different colors and textures. He explains that as the paint is exposed to the extreme elements of the desert climate, it congeals, and the various coats mix and swirl around each other, making different designs.
“It creates wild and inspiring abstractions of color and texture covering the wonderful, sweeping angular shapes of these vehicles from the early and mid- 20th Century,” Speedy said.
“Relics,” will be on view at Morpeth Gallery at 43 West Broad St. in Hopewell during the tour. Gallery visitors will be able to view the exhibit until Oct. 10, along with the work of Speedy’s longtime friend Jodi Miller Olcott.
Rounding out the tour, participants can head over to Vandyke Road to see where artist Lynn Ebeling works on her basketry and ceramic creations, eventually ending up at Sean Mannix’s Highland Design Farm containing studios of over 10 different local artists. The restored farmhouse is set in a backdrop of quintessential Hopewell wilderness featuring a soft flowing stream, shady fall foliage and local wildlife.
“It’s a great place for artists to converge and find inspiration,” Mannix said.
Located at 159 Vandyke Rd., the Design Farm studios will be open to visitors as well as the grounds where Mannix says guests often like to play around with their kids.
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