About Us

Several years ago, I ordered two "gourd birdhouses" for the birds. With the birdhouses, came a
packet of martin gourd seeds. That was the beginning of my gourding life.
The next spring I planted the seeds and had an abundant crop of gourds.
So, now that I had the gourds, what was I to do with them?
The answer came to me one day while I was browsing art galleries along the Oregon Coast. In
one shop, I saw what I thought was a beautiful vase. I thought it was pottery, but
I was so wrong! It was a gourd. All kinds of ideas for making gourd art came into my mind and
I was off on a mission of learning how to work with gourds in a way to make them into
"art."
As for myself, I am a self-taught gourd artist, and that, to me, means that I have learned
by trial and error how to grow gourds, clean gourds, make them into excellent surfaces on
which to paint, engrave, inlay, embellish, pyrograph, or all of those elements on just one
single gourd. I have always had an interest in art, but never knew the joy of gourd art. The
more I work with the gourds, the more I appreciate the beauty of the gourd itself.
I wait for the gourd to "speak to me."
That is, after a while, it is obvious what the gourd could be made into, such as a
mini-bottle gourd into a snowman or a tall bottle gourd may become a palette for
scenery, or a martin gourd cut and carved, then embellished. For whatever art they
are used, they are a natural art medium, grown from the good earth!
No medium - none - so natural could be more beautiful and rewarding with which to work.
I wrote this over a year ago and I still feel that gourds are the BEST mediums to art with.