Creative Hesitation
Ah, the agony of a blank canvas. In this case, the orange skin of the favorite seasonal gourd.
Years past I’ve done a spider (apple corer carved eyes, thin slits cut from the flesh of the sides and rotated to protrude as legs), failed adventurer (leather fedora, coiled whip at the side, and an expression of mortal dismay cross-eyed toward the sword blade running it straight through), various ghouls (the most grotesquely deformed specimens I can find whose peculiarities are adapted into distorted expressions worthy of Bill Waterson), and a demon whose slanted eye leftovers were implanted at the temples to become horns.
In 2001 (the year of the spider) I wanted to try out the “first-time/last-time parachuter,” vertically bisected and tipped face-down into a puddle of innards on a sheet marked with a bulls-eye. Unopened chute still attached intact. Unfortunately, I’d settled on this design in early September prior to the WTC attacks, and thought it would be in pour taste given the fresh images of the tragedy. I’m tempted to revive it now, especially with more surface area on the front walk at this home.
However, I’m also interested in being lazy. Working solely with the pumpkin, or with as little accessorization as possible, is more appealing to me. I can always fall-back to a popular theme applied unusually, such as a pirate-o-lantern, but it lacks that slight edge of perversion I normally look for.
For now it sits there, mocking me: all 26.72lbs of spheroid vegetable matter. But my day will come…
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