Vegetable art starts with a gourd idea

By Pat McTaggart
For The Gazette

ELKADER — It’s called gourd art — the process of turning a humble-looking gourd into a unique work of art that can be the centerpiece in any room in the house.

For former Elkader resident Steve Hosch, 42, interest in gourd art was a progression from a previous hobby.

“To be honest, I sort of stumbled into it,” said Hosch, who teaches at Ames High School.

“I had grown some birdhouse gourds, so I had this box of nasty-looking gourds taking up space in my shed,” Hosch recalled. “Faced with the option of either tossing them out or doing something fun with them, I chose the latter.

“Naturally, given that they were birdhouse-variety gourds, I quickly made dwellings for about every sparrow in Story County.”

Hosch said he soon became bored with the whole birdhouse process. Cleaning the gourds, cutting an opening for the birds and perhaps wood-burning a design on the gourd or painting it became ho-hum.

“In one capacity or another, I’ve done art my whole life, so I think my inner-artist saw some other than birdhouse potential in these lowly vegetables,” said Hosch, who has taken pottery classes. “Perhaps it was the frustrated potter in me that said, ‘Why mess with clay when these are vessels in waiting?’”

Searching the Internet, Hosch found some books on the subject. At a pumpkin farm near Gilbert, he discovered hundreds of gourds in various varieties, shapes and sizes.

Preparing the gourds is time-consuming. First, the gourds have to be dried. Drying times vary according to the size of the gourd and the thickness of its walls, as well as humidity levels. Some can take more than a year.

Because the curing time is so lengthy, Hosch buys his gourds already dried. For the last couple of years, he has been purchasing gourds from a farmer in Arizona. Because of Arizona’s longer growing season, those gourds have thicker shells, which are more conducive for the relief carving that Hosch likes to do.

Once the gourd is thoroughly dry, Hosch soaks it in water for about an hour, then removes any mold and most of the underlying waxy coating on the shell. Removing the remainder of the coating requires re-soaking and scraping the shell with a dull paring knife until the gourd surface is clean.

The next step, cutting an opening, reflects Hosch’s overall design concept for the gourd.

“Does my design call for a round opening, a teardrop shape, or something more angular?” he said. “Often, I try to emulate ancient pottery, so I will create faux cracks and chunks missing around the rim.”

He cuts the openings with either a fine-toothed saw blade that fits into an Exacto knife or a small electric saw with a reciprocating blade.

Hosch then pulls out his custom scraper a neighbor made for him to gut the interior. He smooths the inside with sand paper and vacuums the interior clean. Then he gives it a couple of coats of flat black spray paint.

“Once the interior is finished,” he said, “I can then get down to the fun stuff.”

When Hosch first started working with gourds, he got many of his ideas from gourd art books and the Internet.

“I suppose that’s typical for a lot of beginning artists,” he said. “After gaining more confidence in the medium and all the tools that go with it, artists are able to spread their wings and develop their own unique styles.”

Hosch’s unique style comes from the incorporation of two interrelated sources — nature and the work of indigenous peoples.

“From the time I was a kid, I’ve had an interest in the handiwork and art of Native Americans,” he commented. “In fact, I remember poring over “Indian Lore” books from the Elkader Public Library and then trying to cobble together bows and arrows, hatchets, rope and other faux artifacts that I collected from stuff I’d collected in the woods around town.

“So in my work, you will often see the Native American, African and even Celtic motifs. To accentuate these motifs, I also try to incorporate natural materials, such as basket reed and cane, bits of antler, twigs, ostrich shell and leather and such.”

Hosch sees working on his art as therapeutic. After a bad day at work, a few hours with his art melts away the stress.

“I see my artwork as an exercise in one-upping myself, pushing the boundaries of the medium,” he said. “I guess in that way, it’s kind of organic in nature, and that’s exciting to me. What textures can I create and what mix of patterns work well? What new technique can I learn in order to fashion something unique?”

Hosch knows he’s succeeded when what he calls his “outright trickery” fools a customer.

“I like to see it when people see one of my pieces and can’t figure out the medium,” he said. “They wonder, is it pottery, is it wooden or is it metal? I don’t always want my pieces to be easily identifiable as just gourds.”

Hosch sells his artwork at Gallery 319 in Ames (www.gallery319ames.com) and the Longbranch Gallery in Mineral Point, Wis. (www.longbranchgallery.com). He can be contacted directly by e-mailing shosch@isunet.net

Facts about gourds

Gourds are related to pumpkins and squash and other vegetables, such as cucumbers and melons, in the Cucurbitaceae family.

Two types of gourds can be used decoratively:

• Cucurbita or soft-skinned gourds: Smaller orange, green and gold gourds that look like little squash and are used in fall decorations or dried and carved.
• Lagenaria or hard-skinned gourds: Large gourds, including birdhouse, bottle and dipper gourds, that grow green and turn tan and brown as they dry.

When dried, they can be made into houses for purple martins, swallows, chickadees and wrens.

This is the type Steve Hosch uses for his gourd artwork.

Source: The Old Fashioned Living Web site

Gazette Communications, 2009