Halloween Bricolage at Garage. Backstage photos.

Tradition of Halloween celebration in Ukraine has pretty shallow roots. For the first thing, being a country of Eastern Orthodox Church, Ukraine commemorates all saints in a rather different time than countries of Western Christianity. For another, Ukraine also has the post Soviet heritage  and “there were the times when” while a great part of the World was tricking and treating, soviet people were preparing for another anniversary of October Revolution that took place in November by Gregorian calendar.

So for me Halloween was just “another novelty” for quite a time, known mostly by movies and cartoons. However, several years ago I, for the first time in my life, tried to carve the pumpkin and found this activity quite funny and therapeutic. Moreover, it seems, I have a knack to see what an image is enclosed in the pumpkin I am about to carve.

And as people like to do what gets them to have fun, so I began to carve pumpkins every year. This year garage’ pumpkins were a complete improvisation. Firstly, Oksana and I brought pumpkins picked  at different markets to the workshop . She brought what became a dog; I bought the funny and unusual red/green pumpkin. Then there was curving. While I was waiting for Oksana with her pumpkin, I made a simple sketch of what I am about to carve. On the back you may see the spare pumpkin, and squash to be sure I have plenty of raw materials to work with:-)

However, Oksana wished me to carve a dog from her pumpkin. Pumpkin dog (or wolf) was my little invention. First time I carved it a few years ago. And since Oksana also brought her camera, here we have backstage photos she shot while I was absorbed in carving. In this way we both had great fun.

Funny little coincidence: Man with the lettering “Wolf” (in Italian “Lupo”) on his T-shirt makes a bull terrier dog pumpkin 🙂

Once our Halloween characters were ready, it was time for me also to do some photo shooting. However, simply shooting them on canvas wasn’t much fun.

That’s where real improvisation started. Luckily, Oksana on the way to the garage also bought a lot of nice red apples and brought a candle for inspiration. Nearest poplar tree provided us The Leaves. Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors, and that evening I just finished rereading his book “Witches abroad” and we considered it to be pretty thematic addition to the future photo background (or foreground as a matter of fact).  In no time canvas was ready  and that was where our previous Halloween post was started…

 

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