I got into gourds more or less by accident. Most of my professional life has been spent in the field of education. When Dave retired from teaching, he turned to his long-time hobby of wood working and we got on the craft show “circuit”. One of our neighbors at a show introduced me to gourds … and I was hooked. When I retired, I decided that if I was going to craft shows anyway, that I should do my own thing. And I've been “gourding” ever since.

Each gourd is different and I rarely know what I'm going to do with it until I begin. That's part of the fun. Gourds are a perfect outlet for all my previous years of dabbling with drawing, painting, and hand coloring photographs. I learn from every gourd I do and experimenting with different techniques is what makes it fun.

And even though the way I chose to carve and decorate a gourd is very different, I'm also joining a long tradition of gourd carvers and decorators that dates back centuries and crosses a multitude of cultures.