Just when I thought it was impossible for Matt Kahn’s art students to come up with new ideas to carve a pumpkin, I was proven wrong. Again. For the eighth year now.
Professor Kahn has given the same assignment to his Stanford University students since 1949. They must carve a pumpkin, it must be a lantern, and it has to say “boo”. You can read more about the assignment here and my post from last year’s pumpkins is here.
The pumpkins started out innocuous enough in the daylight…
…but then they took on a more ghoulish character at night:
I saw this giant ram pumpkin glowing at the front of the driveway all the way from the end of the street:
It proved to be difficult to capture its massive size through the lens of my camera. Perhaps you can appreciate its relative size next to the two onlookers standing on the left.
The bold graphics of this cat-face pumpkin stood out amongst the others at the other end of the driveway.
This cartoon face definitely said “boo”:
The most creative “boo” went to this blood-thirsty shark:
The orange back light and the sinister eyes gave this kiss a grisly feeling:
This minimalist pumpkin proved that it does not necessarily require hours of carving to be effective:
Not that there’s anything wrong with putting in a lot of work. Take a look at this fine-looking bird:
The one that got a lot of buzz was this imaginative pumpkin carved to look like mosaic tiles.
On the shelf immediately above it was a pumpkin carved in the style of Van Gogh’s “Starry Nights”, a wonderful Jack-O-Lantern with flame eyes, and a paisley-like floral pattern.
Once again I was so impressed with the creativity of the students this year; surely next year’s students can not conceive of new ideas. Or can they?
Flickr set here.
