In this post, Deborah Hildinger: Gourds with Unique Textures, I want to share with you the process of a professional gourd artist selling her gourds and winning “Best of Show” Ribbons at both gourd festivals and art festival.
Deborah is a master gourd artist from Florida. Although retired, she dedicates herself full-time to creating gourds, showcasing her work at art shows, museums, and gourd festivals. With a busy schedule of events, she produces more than 50 gourds each year. Deborah has developed a creative process that can offer valuable tips and help us think about how to sequence our work more efficiently. Additionally, she has mastered various texture techniques that enhance her work, allowing her pieces to win awards and achieve sales. In this post, I will share some of these insights with you.
Background Information
Deborah Hildinger earned a Master of Fine Arts degree with a double major in Printmaking and Painting in 1979. After graduating, she worked as a finishing artist for WED Show Production during the construction of EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World. In 2004, she moved to California, where she became the administrator of the permanent art collection at Orlando International Airport, overseeing the artwork in the collection.
Deborah retired from her position as an adjunct instructor at Allan Hancock College, where she taught a variety of classes, including portraiture, drawing, digital fine art, art appreciation, and American art history, from 2005 to 2016.
Upon returning to Florida in 2016, Deborah is now a full-time artist, showcasing her work at art festivals and at the HUB on Canal in New Smyrna Beach, FL, where she creates fine art gourds.
Deborah is an accomplished artist with awards in printmaking, painting, pastel, digital imagery, and fine crafts. She has exhibited her work in galleries, museums, and sidewalk art festivals throughout the Southeastern United States and California.
Watching Her Work Her Magic
Deborah has generously shared her artistic process through several videos. She often takes visitors on a studio tour via her website , showing her progress in creating the gourds for the upcoming season. A walk through her studio reveals 50 to 80 gourds in various stages of preparation, each awaiting application techniques. She will work on these gourds nearly every day for over eight months taking each gourd through each technique as a group.
Her video updates discussing this process is very enlightening and shows an organized production sequence that you might adopt.
As I describe each technique, I will provide links to the videos where I gathered my images so you can hear her discuss her work.
The Gourd Art Making Progress
Once the chosen gourds are cleaned and organized into groups based on size and purpose, Debroah begins the design process, allowing each gourd in the group to inspire its unique design. If a gourd needs to be cut open, she carefully marks a cutting line, uses a mini jigsaw for the cut, and cleans out the insides. For those that don’t require cutting, the design process starts with basic layout sketches drawn directly on the gourd.
Planning an Abstract Design for a Gourd is Helpful
“The majority of my work begins with my sketchbook. I create thumbnail sketches of each gourd shape, noting areas for carving, burning, and ornamentation,” she explains.
This step is crucial, especially when the design will incorporate more than two or three techniques.
These sketches are then transferred onto each gourd, with each section labeled with a sticker with a letter indicating the corresponding technique. The goal is for the abstract design to flow seamlessly around the gourd and complement each technique, and sketching it on paper helps identify any weaknesses in the design.
Sequencing the Production Process
Deborah dedicates a day or more to focus on one specific task. The first step is dying the surfaces of all the required gourds. I was surprised to see her doing this before the wood burning.
Video Reel
After that, she draws the gourds’ design lines, then she burns or carve the outlined shapes. She sets up a well-organized workstation with all the gourds and necessary supplies. This organization lets her clearly see what process will come next and how many gourds will be involved and also if she has enough supplies.
Additionally, she is open to reviewing past work and is willing to dismantle and revise her techniques to streamline the process for the future. Notice that the sketch book is referred to at each technique.
An Abstract Design Can be Challenging
Deborah’s abstract style focuses on the textures created by applying textured objects or burning and carving lines and shapes into the gourd skin. While her techniques are not overly complicated, her materials are unique, and her method of attaching them to the gourds is intriguing. As a result, her gourd work stands out from other artists.
I want to share how she creates textural interest through wood burning, carving, and the addition of embellishments such as beads, rocks, reed weaving, and botanicals. You may find her ideas inspiring enough to try them on your gourds.
Deborah’s Wood Burning Styles
Deborah often incorporates line patterns across large sections of her gourds. These subtle patterns provide a quiet resting place for the eye before it moves on to busier areas.
Some of these patterns can be recognized as tangles, which I also enjoy using on my gourds; you can search for them under “zentangles.”
Once the pattern is drawn in white pencil, the lines are wood burned. Notice how these areas are enhanced by a carved line which is thicker and draws your eye to each area.
Stippling and Filigree
In addition to wood burning, she uses stippling dots created with a carving tool to add another layer of texture.
Deborah also likes to create large areas of carved filigree. The substantial holes allow light to pass through the gourd, creating depth through negative space. However, this technique does weaken the structural integrity of the gourd.
Deborah Loves to Include Embellishments
Collecting embellishment is addictive, and I relate to her stash of treasures lying around her studio. These items from nature give her abstract design an organic appeal that attracts the viewer.
Because the patterns on her gourds are so busy, she needs a large botanical for the rim to hold your attention.
Her choices include shells from the sea, which are part of her environment.
Here are the video links for Embellishment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOXbQa6XORc&t=23s
A lot of thought goes into picking just the right embellishment for each piece. But they can be stunning and sell the work quickly.
You can find botanicals online or at art festivals or garden shops
Many of these heavy forms are attached with wire or sometimes I use a heavy medium gel that dries clear.
I was surprised to hear Deborah relies on the easy-to-find Gorilla glue for both beads and and
Try Adding Pebbles to your Gourds
Pebbles are another easy and unusual texture to add to your gourd with glue.
Make sure that the design goes around the entire gourd so that it stays balanced. This effect takes patience with the glue and the drying process.
Also be sure you carve a deep enough space for the pebbles to sit inside the edges nicely and evenly.
Using Gourd Seeds as Decoration
As you look at her work, notice how she uses gourd seeds. These are first colored or dyed, then they are varnished before she attaches them with wire.
Here’s a tip: When sticking the wire in through the back of the gourd, tie a bead at the end of the wire along with a dab of glue. Then it will stay secure as you pull on it to attach a bead, seed, or botanical to the surface.
She also uses varnished gourd seeds that are attached with wire.
Seed Beads add the Sparkle to Her Textures
Deborah uses several kinds of beads on her gourds. She has shared on her video that many of her gourds have over 100 seed beads.
Beading is done on the gourds with seed beads and ultra gel super glue. She is using 11-over-0-seed-beads here!
The wood burned line patterns often get tiny seed beads glued into a depression used by her filigree bit. Hours are involved here, along with patience.
Weaving Reed through the Middle of the Gourd
This technique requires cutting the gourd, creating negative space to weave numbers two and three reeds.
A great tip is to soak your reed in water before beginning. This will make the strips more pliable.
This technique is often the answer to a gourd with a bad surface to work on. But it must be a thick gourd. Cutting it this way does weaken the structure of the gourd, so keep a light touch through the process.
If you have more interest in the process of dying the reeds, watch her video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts3vnKadmbI
Trying New Techniques
Artist like nothing better than trying new materials and Deb shares how she uses a large cotton coil for a gourd rim. The cotton cord comes from an upholstery shop. It is about one inch in diameter.
Once the cotton is cut to the correct size, she wraps it with fabric cut into strips and then wraps it around the coil. She shows both silk and tie-dye stripping in the video. She uses her glue to attach it to an area that seems loose.
Lastly, she uses a slip stitch to bind it on the top with wax linen thread.
She talks about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xme0FcTMy8&t=42s
Make Your Own Paper Beads
Here’s a great TV watching activity. A box of paper strips, glue, and a few tools! Make your own beads from paper or fabric.
There are now great tools that make the process more precise, and many videos online help you get started.
The big paper beads made for free, combined with stone beads make a great statement without costing much money!
These lightweight beads can be attached to a linen cord. She will also include stones and African beads for variety.
Looking for New Forms
Each show means a new collection of gourds that look different from last year’s collection. She must always be generating new forms and themes. Her pitchers are a favorite with her collectors and over the years they get more complicated designs.
Different shapes of teapots are always a favorite.
She also has elevated the non-flat gourds with sticks and bamboo.
Here she has turned just the gourd lid into a sculpture element.
Another idea is put groups of small gourds into boxes.
She also is now using the gourd as a vessel that hold the texture embellishments.
If you like her work, then follow her videos on Facebook and on her website. I enjoy hearing about her challenges and her solutions to her gourd problems. I find this the fun part of creating gourd art. You think you know what the final gourd will look like, but sometimes it has other ideas or you become obsessed with finding a way to do it differently because you can.
Then when you win the biggest ribbon in the show, it makes all the time and effort worthwhile.
I hope this information will inspire you to try some of these materials and explore the richness textures can add to your own gourd style.
Have you seen her work personally or taken one of her classes.
Please, share your thoughts here in the comment box or share them with all the gourd artists on our Facebook Group Page.
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