What do you do when you don’t have pumpkins? Well, a good friend of mine gave me this block of limestone to play with. Weighed in the neighborhood of 480 pounds

I took it to the 2026 Northwest Stone Sculptures retreat held annually near Port Orchard, WA and fortunately, they had a crane available to lift it onto my carving table.

…….and, what else would he do but carve a giant pumpkin!

But wait, what is that in the front?

Hey, that’s me!

Yep! That’s me alright. Happily emerging and discovering that there is a world outside of Pumpkins!

AKA- Self-Portrait

Sometimes I use pumpkins to model pieces that I might do in stone such as this pumpkin that preceded the stone self-portrait

Just as this pumpkin below served as a model for a later work in marble

That is titled

STATE OF THE UNION