There’s still time to enter 2015 Pumpkin Carving Contest; advice from last year’s winner

October 30, 2015

Photo by West Philly Local reader Dan Chen.

The 5th annual West Philly Local Pumpkin Carving Contest is underway, and you can still enter it before it closes at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 31. Many thanks to everyone who already sent us photos of their pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns! We hope to receive more though. Don’t be shy, take a snapshot of your pumpkin and email it along with your name and address to: contest@westphillylocal.com and who knows, maybe you can win some great prizes provided by our sponsors: Curio Theatre, Greensgrow Farms, Lil’ Pop Shop, Local 44, Mariposa Food Coop, Renata’s Kitchen, and VIX Emporium. More info on how to enter the contest can be found here.

By the way, you don’t have to be an artist to win our contest, you just have to be really into it, according to our multiple prize winner Bimal Desai. Bimal is a pediatrician at CHOP and lives with his wife Naomi, also a pediatrician, and 6-year-old twins, Sam and Mauli, in Spruce Hill. We interviewed Bimal last year, but didn’t get a chance to publish the interview then. We’re publishing some excerpts from the interview now and hope Bimal’s excitement about pumpkin carving will inspire you.

Bimal Desai and his winner pumpkin in 2011.

“I really get into my pumpkins each year, as you can tell. I have a blast doing this: everything from thinking about the design, to choosing the pumpkin, to actually carving it.”

“I think the key to winning is learning and practicing lots of different styles/techniques. Most of what I know about pumpkin carving I learned from the internet. The internet is an amazing place, especially if you’re a tinkerer. If you want to learn to do something new, there’s a good chance someone has already made an Instructable or a YouTube video to get you started.”

“[In 2013] I was inspired by the amazing pumpkin carving work of Ray Villafane (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAf-eIvarJs) and YouTube user “The Feather Artist” (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheFeatherArtist). So I decided I’d give it a try, “sculpting” the pumpkin instead of carving it with a knife. So I went to the Dick Blick art store on Chestnut and Juniper and spent about $12 on a clay tool set. The werewolf that won “scariest” pumpkin [in 2013] was my first attempt at this technique”:

“I’m eager to teach [my kids] how to carve pumpkins as soon as they’re old enough to work with knives safely. This year, they drew the faces they wanted carved on their own pumpkins in permanent marker, but I handled the sharp tools. Next year, who knows, maybe they’ll enter their own pumpkins in the kids category!”