Gourd Art: From Seed to Gallery by Martha Danek

“Gourds? You paint on…gourds?” 

Yes — a resounding yes! Gourds provide a fabulous, pre-made form and a beautiful surface for painting. Here are a few paragraphs making the case for gourds!

First of all, you can grow them yourself, which is fun. We did that for years, at our home in Bynum, NC – especially the years when our children were little and liked to help. You plant them in May, water them all summer (after building a fence to keep the deer out), pick them when the vines start to die (usually around September), and then let them dry. Their drying process is messy, so it’s good to put your freshly picked gourds on a surface that won’t be impacted by moisture. We learned that you also need a wire enclosure to keep the squirrels out while they dry, because, you know — squirrels. 

Gourd Vines, Mid-summer

It's important to know that (after being picked and during their drying process) gourds go through a very ugly phase. It’s also best not to touch them (i.e. pick them up) during this time, because they’re very delicate. The first time I grew them, back in the early 1990’s, I thought the gourds I’d grown were all rotting, but it’s really just a natural part of the process; as the water leeches out of them, they become covered with white, grey, and black mold, but after all of the water has left and the mold is dry, you can just wash it off the surface of the gourd. The drying time depends on the size of your gourds — large bushel gourds take months to dry, while small cannonball gourds take only a few weeks.

The Awkward, Drying Stage

After your gourds are dry to the point of being almost weightless (you can sometimes hear seeds rattling around inside, as well), it’s time to wash the dried mold off them. I recommend getting the gourd completely wet in a large bucket, and then using a plastic dishwashing sponge to scrub it. Believe it or not, this is another fun stage — washing the mold away reveals the beautiful, mottled surface of the gourd itself, often marked with the lines and shapes of vines and leaves that affected it as it developed. The surface looks a lot like wood, in shades ranging from light gold to tan to deep brown.

A Newly Washed Gourd, Showing Color Variations from Vines and Leaves

There are many varieties of gourds, in many different shapes and sizes, and their names often relate to their shapes; for example, there are basketball gourds, bottle gourds, snake gourds, dipper gourds, cannonball gourds, egg gourds, apple gourds, and kettle gourds, and they look pretty much like you’d imagine. If you’re interested in growing some, you can buy seeds at most garden supply stores or you can order them online.

When I begin to work on a clean, dry gourd, I consider what type of opening it should have, if any. The shape of the gourd itself often inspires the subject matter I choose, as do the natural markings on the gourd. I use a tiny, hand-held electric saw to cut the opening, and then remove the seeds inside. I sand the pithy surface of the inside of the gourd (the outside is hard and smooth, but the inside is like a very old, dried sponge), and usually paint it black, to make the negative space recede and be less distracting to the future design on the surface.

Bushel Gourd Seeds

Now comes my favorite part, which is the painting of the exterior of the gourd; I love using watercolor paint and India ink on my pieces, because the watercolor allows the natural mottling of the gourd to show through, adding dimension and honoring the beauty of the natural surface. Almost always, my pieces depict subjects from nature--trees, flowers, rabbits, moths, frogs, turtles — I love them all, and they seem to fit very comfortably on this natural gourd “canvas.” Birds are probably my favorite subject to paint, not only for their beauty, but because of the themes they sometimes represent to us – freedom, family, caretaking, etc. I love the idea of nest-building, and often use found materials such as leather, twigs, and hemp to create stylized nests perched at the tops of my pieces.

The last stage in the creation of my gourd art is the varnishing. I use six layers of four different types of varnish, which serve a dual purpose of protecting the painted surface and bringing out the depth of the gourd’s natural coloring; it’s a lot like finishing wood, in that the varnish enhances the beauty that has been supplied by nature.

So…if you didn’t know much about gourd art before reading this, I hope it has been helpful and interesting to you. I am so happy to be a new member of the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts and feel honored to have been included by the amazing artists there. I hope that you can stop by and see all of our work sometime soon!

—HGA Member Artist Martha Danek