Gadgetory

we pretty much created the pumpkin market every year we think that pumpkins can't get any better and we can't refine what it is we do anymore and every year you know the pumpkins keep getting better and better we're here at the Brooklyn based pop-up shop of maniac pumpkin carvers founded by Chris Soria and Marc Evan it started as a hobby but after a huge order from the New York Yankees this seasonal business took off we've recruited a handful of other artists that were friends with if you can draw on paint you could probably carve pumpkins I mean we're carving sometimes 50 hundred plus pumpkins within a 24 hour window so why do you think brands are so attracted to like promoting through pumpkin Halloween is one of the biggest holidays in the u.s. so it's a good go-to for advertisers we did a time lapse for Jack Daniel's we've done a time lapse for Disney some of the more individual personal requests will be a lot of signage we've been getting like a lot of will you marry me pumpkins but my favorite thing to do is carve live and sometimes we carve humongous pumpkins and last time we did a really cool piece where it said Luna Park and we cut pieces out of other pumpkins and then attached it to the big pumpkin so it looks like the tentacles are like bursting through the pumpkin and we've actually shown our pumpkin four years in a row MoMA we've done van Gogh's Starry Night one of Matisse's cutouts Magritte's treachery of images and I'd watch the screen so we're dealing with pop culture but we also are really interested in elevating the art of pumpkin carving itself we also get a lot of portrait requests which is one of the more difficult things to capture in a pumpkin you're not just capturing the image it has to look like that person you're really trying to create a likeness so could we try a virtual ogo maybe we could like Halloween Halloween Halloween it up a little bit yeah add some bats make it a little spooky a lot of these tools you can get them at any arts and crafts stores and they're usually used for other things so like China markers for drawing out your design linoleum cutters ribbon loops an exacto knife paring knives and the only thing we really use that's specifically a pumpkin tool is the pumpkin scooper the technique and method that we're using is subtractive so it's almost counterintuitive like deeper you go the more light you're bringing out and so what happens if like you make a mistake on a pumpkin you just have to like throw the pumpkin out and start over there are ways to save pumpkin that's kind of going the wrong direction every once in a while it's passed the point of no return and we have to toss it actually what may happen more frequently than that is our typos so how long does it normally take it's like you're doing a pumpkin this size if you're doing like a logo I guess a logo a magic about an hour and a half and how much would a face take a face could take four plus hours so we actually cut the back out not the top it's very little you could do to preserve the pumpkin there's like techniques that people talk about like putting Vaseline on the cut areas or like spraying it with lemon juice but the best thing to do is put a creek just the best way to preserve it just take a picture yeah the light that we use it definitely punches through the pulp better than candles and it also eliminates the need for fire up until now I've been just kind of guessing and carving the different depths that I think the values show up in but now that the lights in I could see all like the linocut strokes and everything and on a macro level it's almost like landscaping now you got all the techniques and you can win all the pumpkin carving competitions because it's not really fair for us to enter them anymore you're like so good it's like rude it's not cool we judged them now the spirit of Halloween should be like celebrated with everybody you don't have to be a professional artist to enjoy pumpkin carving and everybody should do it