Saturday, October 31, 2009

Stanford Pumpkin Art 2009

DSC02970 Halloween Pumpkin Shelf

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…

DSC02936 Bird Pumpkins

DSC02937 Pumpkin Face

…but then they took on a more ghoulish character at night:

DSC02954 Bird Pumpkins

DSC02976 Face Pumpkin

I saw this giant ram pumpkin glowing at the front of the driveway all the way from the end of the street:

DSC02944 Giant Ram Pumpkin

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.

DSC02989 Giant Ram Pumpkin

The bold graphics of this cat-face pumpkin stood out amongst the others at the other end of the driveway.

DSC02953 Cat Pumpkin

This cartoon face definitely said “boo”:

DSC02977 Cartoon Face Pumpkin

The most creative “boo” went to this blood-thirsty shark:

DSC02971 Shark Pumpkin

The orange back light and the sinister eyes gave this kiss a grisly feeling:

DSC02956 Kiss Pumpkin

This minimalist pumpkin proved that it does not necessarily require hours of carving to be effective:

DSC02979 Minimalist Pumpkin

Not that there’s anything wrong with putting in a lot of work. Take a look at this fine-looking bird:

DSC02972 Bird Pumpkin

The one that got a lot of buzz was this imaginative pumpkin carved to look like mosaic tiles.

DSC02983 Mosaic Pumpkin

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.

DSC02957 Halloween Pumpkins

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.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Bookmark and Share