Betty White, Olivia Newton-John, and Queen Elizabeth II are leading the lanterns this year as Halloween fans head to a Carved festival in Los Angeles.
The one-mile walkthrough event – which opened to the public on Friday evening – sees hundreds of carved pumpkins line a route at Descanso Gardens in Flintridge. Among them, are tributes and memorials to stars who passed away in 2022, plus pop culture icons and references like ‘Stranger Things’, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Darth Vader, Rocky Horror, Encanto, and Beetlejuice.
“We have artists come in just for the season and they carve 200 to 300-pound pumpkins with pieces of art. They really are. They’re like movie monsters and in memoriam and your favorite pop culture references,” explains Jennifer Errico from Descanso Gardens, who also points out that it’s not just over-excited kids potentially causing damage: “Squirrels love pumpkins. We are constantly replacing our live pumpkins here at the show just because it’s like a feast for them.”
Families flock through the various scenes, with both parents and kids wide-eyed at the attractions:
“It’s beautiful. It’s I mean, we come during the day, but seeing it at nighttime with everything lit up and all the interactive things that kids can play with it, it’s awesome for families,” says mother Michaela Sanchez, 34, from Los Angeles who has come to celebrate her birthday with her young daughters.
The sentiment is echoed by fellow parent Sarah Brunick, 44, from Los Angeles who’s showing her three-year-old son, Edward around: “To see what they come up with, what they want to be, what they see. With all of this, compared to what we see as adults, it’s kind of just.. it’s joyful and bright and fun to see what they do.”
“Aaron Schwartzman, 42 from Los Angeles agrees: “It’s a Halloween, like, verse that they’ve created here. It feels like.. it feels like a very unique space, but it also feels like you’re being a part of art,” he tells Reuters as three-year-old son, Kye, dressed in a little devil costume, wriggles about in his arms: “I love the bird and its eyes and noses and mouth,” interjects.
They are the ideal visitors for Descanso Gardens, with Errico highlighting what they do here to keep youngsters happy: “By the time the kids come, they see the pumpkin house, and they run the hay maze through the camellia forest. In the okra, we have platforms that they run around. They set off lights and sounds. They will be exhausted at the end of this.”
Live pumpkin carvers show crowds how it’s done, while in a special studio, and more are being prepared.
Getting the lanterns ready is a real labor of love for the Creative Director. Kristen Griffin, 31, who tells Reuters just how much preparation goes into getting everything just right:
“We start carving them about four days before the first opening night happens, and then we basically just carve them as they rot. So we do 32 per week and then as they start to rot, we replace them,” she says, adding:
“It’s a lot of live and learn, so lots of mistakes are made and we have to kind of just figure out, because it’s an organic piece. We have to figure out either to cover it up or do better the next time.”
Behind her, a team of carvers is busy at work on delicate designs which will only last a matter of days when they are laid out – their demise sped up by Southern California’s gruelling heat.
As one artist puts the finishing touches to a creepy adaptation of a clothes store mannequin, complete with bent, light-up fingers, first-time pumpkin carver Nicole Caceres, 28, from Los Angeles admits she is a little nervous:
“It’s extremely nerve-racking working on pumpkins, something I’ve never done before. But it’s also been very fun to be able to work in a medium that I’ve never done, even though I’ve done a lot of different mediums. This one’s completely different from all the rest,” she says.
