Pumpkin art: releasing their inner ghoul

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

VINDICATOR ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — Patrick Moser doesn’t just carve giant pumpkins. He releases their inner ghoul.

The Jamestown, N.Y., man has gained a reputation for his Grumpkins, which is what he calls the characters he creates out of the massive gourds.

Each autumn he travels the country demonstrating his skill at festivals. He’ll make his first visit to the Giant Pumpkin Festival at Yankee Lake this weekend and next.

Moser will carve two giant pumpkins at Yankee Lake, one in each of the festival’s two weekends. He will carve a smallish pumpkin (about 450 pounds) in his first weekend. But he will take on a true giant — upward of 1,100 pounds — the second weekend. “I will carve the weigh-in winner,” he said.

It takes Moser about 40 hours to carve each pumpkin.

The process

Moser’s secret lies in his creative process.

First he examines the outside of the pumpkin. Then he cuts through the bottom and does exploratory surgery on the “fruit,” as he calls it.

Finally, he talks to the pumpkin. “The pumpkin tells me who it is,” he said.

Moser elaborated on his methods. “When I start carving a pumpkin, I don’t know what it’s going to look like,” he said. “I draw some lines on it, and have a general idea, but I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. It chooses its own path, by the way it has grown, its structure, its cracks, its defects, its flesh density.”

He starts out by cleaning out the pumpkin’s guts. Then he examines it. “Depending on wall thickness, I know where I can work,” he said.

Moser does not cut all the way through the pumpkin, but works only on the surface.

Because giant pumpkins are mostly water and deteriorate very quickly, he must first treat them to slow their deterioration. First he shaves off the skin and douses the pumpkin with isopropyl alcohol to dry it out and open the pores. Then he coats it with various chemicals.

Career

A former graphic artist, Moser developed multiple sclerosis in 2002, costing him the use of his right arm. He had always carved pumpkins but took the hobby more seriously after his disease forced him to leave his job.

Moser gives each of his carved pumpkins a name that fits its personality. There’s the beaver-faced Morton Grinaginn, the menacing Freddie Growloon and the dopey-looking Herman Graffles, to name a few.

Pumpkin-carving is “disposable art,” Moser says, because the finished pieces begin to rot and shrivel almost as soon as they are finished. Watching them change every day — sometimes into even more ghoulish faces — is part of the fun, he said.