Dying form of gourd art reveals underlying generational trend

RALEIGH - Stan Atwood grew up in the mountains where running water wasn’t always available. The first time he became acquainted with gourds was when his grandmother would use them to get water from the spring.

Today, he is the president of the North Carolina Gourd Society, the alpha chapter of US gourd societies that started out in 1937 as a garden club in Cary, N.C. There, members met in libraries for years before moving to the N.C. State Fair Grounds, where this year's 78th annual North Carolina Gourd Festival was held on Nov. 9 and 10.

There, vendors and artists sold and displayed their gourd craft creations. As visitors participated in workshops and learned how to create their own pieces of gourd art, judges examined the pumpkin-based creations for display in the exhibition area.

Judges evaluating the gourd art entries at the exhibition table. [Oliver Fischer]

According to a Smithsonian Magazine article, the famous use of gourds as bird houses by Native American tribes may have provided insect control for human settlements. The Purple Martin bird has even become reliant on these gourd bird houses, ditching wild tree cavities for these artificial homes.

“I think most people are fascinated to find out just exactly how many uses there are and what you can do with gourds,” Atwood said. “They’re not just for birdhouses, which most people associate them with.”

A dying art

Despite the rich history and utility of gourds, the future of both gourd farming and gourd art looks bleak according to vice president of the North Carolina Gourd Society, Judy Fleming.

“It really is something for younger people to think of as a cash crop that is very easy to grow because it’s just sunlight and water,” Fleming said.

Judy Fleming is approached by one of the vendors. [Oliver Fischer]

Yet younger generations aren’t getting into either.

“Most of the people are aging out and that’s unfortunate because it’s such an easy thing and fun thing to do,” she said.

Both gourd farming and art require lengthy time investments, which may be less enticing for younger generations.

“Getting younger people to turn away from electronic devices and do hands-on things is a challenge in every industry,” Fleming said.

In the agricultural industry, the average age of farmers has increased by almost eight years between 1982 and 2012 according to the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1982, the average farmer age was 50.5. In 2012, it was 58.3, a 15.4 percent increase.

Fleming also said that brain patterns have changed to expect instant gratifications.

“For any other activity that you do, you have to allow yourself to get that muscle memory, whether it’s painting or carving or cutting or basket weaving,” she said. “Kids nowadays don’t understand that they’ve lost that ‘I’m going to try it until I’m good at it.’”

A place for gourd lovers

Those who are interested in trying to improve their gourd art skills could do so at the one of the many workshops at the festival. Now in its eigth decade, Festival Chair for the North Carolina Gourd Society, Ellen Healy, said that the success of the festival is mostly due to the nature of the gourd.

Visitors admire the gourd art exhibition. [Oliver Fischer]

“You can do anything on it,” she said. “You can carve on it. You can paint it. You can cut it. You can take pieces of it, put them together, so it just crosses so many boundaries in art that people find out ‘oh my gosh, I can do this, this and this, I’m in’ and, you know, they love it.”

The 150 member strong NC Gourd society manages to attract about 800 to 1,000 visitors each year according to Atwood. The purpose of the society is promote the history and culture of gourds. It’s a history that is not exclusive to North Carolina.

“Gourds go back through antiquity of use by cultures all over the world because of their durability and use for water carrying, baskets and many other functional things,” Atwood said.

Functional uses for gourds today include holiday season decorations and making sponges from the Luffa gourd.

A gourd for everyone

For Atwood, part of the attraction, and the reason he believes keeps people coming back to the festivals, is the unusual nature of the gourd.

Visitors of all ages attended the NC Gourd Festival. [Oliver Fischer]

“When people look at it, I think it’s just something that’s a little out of the ordinary and a little unusual,” he said. “There’s a lot of national galleries where the top gourd artists show their pieces and they can sell what they create for thousands of dollars. It’s just another art form.”

For most of the visitors, the festival may be once-a-year history lesson, entertainment trip or learning experience. But there are gourd aficionados that have structured their entire life around the unusual fruit.

“It’s fascinating to me to find out years ago that there’s people that actually make their living totally from growing gourds or crafting gourds or they travel around the country going from one gourd show to the next and sell their craft,” Atwood said.

Sherry Briscoe is one of the people who has placed the gourds at the center of their lives. Her first encounter with the oddly shaped fruit was 17 years ago at the back of a truck filled with moldy gourds. Not knowing what they were, Briscoe approached the owner, who then explained that some people use them to create art. In that moment, Briscoe recognized the shape of a penguin in one of the gourds she was staring at.

Sherry Briscoe attending to a customer at her vendor stand at the NC Gourd Festival. [Oliver Fischer]

“I got bit by the gourd bug,” she said.

Briscoe, in her mid-70s, farmed her own gourds at first. Today, she buys gourds from a farmer so that she can carve, paint and wood burn them for selling. By also teaching workshop classes and traveling across the country to attend 16 to 18 gourd shows a year with her husband, the Briscoes were able to make a living solely from gourds.

“A lot of people think they don’t have any artistic talents, but they can do gourds,” Briscoe said. “That’s part of what I love about teaching.”

Despite her efforts to teach the next generation about gourd art, Briscoe has also noticed that younger people simply aren't as interested in carving gourds or creating gourd art.

“The gourd art is going to die if we can’t get more young people so that they can come in with all their enthusiasm and continue the art,” she said. “It’s kind of sad, it’s kind of like the mountain crafts that are dying out because the people that are doing them are old."

New replaces old

But not everyone agrees that younger generations aren’t interested in hands-on activities. Professor of sociology at Elon University, Thomas Arcaro, said he witnesses hands-on activities with his son and daughter, who run a YouTube channel and TikTok account respectively.

“I think people are always excited by and made happy by accomplishing personal growth kinds of goals,” he said. “The appropriate technology 50 years ago might have been carving on gourds. It’s not the urge to do things hands-on, it’s the form that that hands-on behavior takes, and it’s going to take a form appropriate to the time and technology.”

To Arcaro, the desire to produce things with hands has never left younger generations. What has changed is the way younger people express that desire.

“The boomers don’t quite understand that as technology changes, the way people do hands-on is going to change,” Arcaro said.

Today, hands-on may no longer mean getting dirty finger nails. Rather, it could mean learning how to raise or lower the volume at the end of a video edit. “It’s a very good way of expressing the need to learn, the need to master something and to feel a sense of accomplishment,” Arcaro said.

Judges examining a globe gourd. [Oliver Fischer]

Even if younger generations are still making things and fulfilling the needs of hands-on activities, albeit in different ways, that doesn’t change the fact that the tradition of gourd farming and art might not have a future. But a loss like this is not unique according to Arcaro.

“Art forms have always been lost as technology changes, history changes, demographics, change, so art forms have been lost and gained and lost and gained all throughout time,” Arcaro said. “This particular niche, gourd art, is inevitably headed for the dust bin through the passage of time.”

Senior Instructional Technologist Dan Reis, who supervises the Maker Hub in downtown Elon, has a similar view on hands-on activities as Arcaro. Such activities may include editing a video, 3D printing or other processes that involve nothing more than a keyboard to end up with either a physical or digital product.

“They are more into hands-on activities than ever because they have access to create things on their phone. Everywhere they turn there are tools that they can use to create,” Reis said. But the distinction between creating physical and digital things is an important one. Reis has observed some hesitation in younger generations regarding physical making.

“Current students are less inclined to jump in making something physical,” Reis said. “Making something that results in a physical product or physical artifact like gourd art, I think they need encouragement to explore that.”

Visitors checking out one of the vendor stalls at the NC Gourd Festival. [Oliver Fischer]

Reis said students who have an inclination to make physical things usually inherit it from parents who encouraged them. But the value from creating something physical is not derived from the shiny end-product, but rather from the process and attempts it took to get there.

“The ability to go through a process to make that thing is a valuable experience for students,” he said. “It is empowering to see a project go through a process and get better.”

Although Briscoe believes that gourd art is aging out along with its artists, she admits that, as Arcaro observed, young people's desire to create things never died. They may just prefer to express that desire in different ways than they did in the past.

“Kids love to craft. They just don’t like something that takes a lot of time,” she said.