5,000 painstakingly detailed pumpkins are headed to the Meadowlands this month Watch video
The themes read like an in memoriam for 2016: David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman.
But around the bend, there's the manic mug of Beetlejuice, too, along with gnarly Freddy Krueger and a wide-eyed Ariel from "The Little Mermaid." A group of 10 artists quietly sit at rough wooden tables, drawing and painting these faces and others on the bumpy orange skin of gargantuan squashes.
At this pumpkin studio, a Halloween workshop worthy of Jack Skellington nestled in the Hudson Valley in Peekskill, N.Y., New Jersey's first Rise of the Jack O'Lanterns show is coming to life. A triumph of seasonal artistry, the final show, which lands at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus from Oct. 27 to 30, will boast 5,000 hand-carved jack-o'-lanterns. Of that group, 100 extra-large pumpkins will display complex, hand-painted images of celebrities, movie characters and athletes.
The goal, says Thomas Olton, lifelong Halloween enthusiast and Rise of the Jack O'Lanterns' master carver, is "disbelief" -- a sea of moodily lit orange rounds that glare at visitors in search of a fall jaunt.
First the artists trace, sketch or paint the likeness of the characters from photos, then the pumpkins get the knife a few days before the start of each show. There are five Rise shows in the country. Jersey and Boston are the latest additions to the production, which started in Old Westbury, N.Y. in 2012.
"We have about two days to set the show up but we prepare year-round," says Olton, 37, standing across from the rows of colossal pumpkins.
These are no ordinary farm pumpkins. In fact, they're not good for eating at all, Olton says, so staff don't save the large quantity of leftover seeds and guts for baking.
At the Rise of the Jack O'Lanterns headquarters in Peekskill, N.Y., Rob Thompson paints Odell Beckham Jr.'s famous one-handed catch on a pumpkin. The white highlights of the image are where the pumpkin will get carved. (Amanda Marzullo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)The hulking squash -- Dill's Atlantic Giant, Prizewinner and Big Max varieties -- come from farms in New York, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire and can weigh anywhere from 80 and 130 pounds each. Some jack-o'-lantern events forgo coping with the messy insides by using foam pumpkins. It's harder to work with real pumpkins (and haul them around) but that's the fun, Olton says.
"The amount of labor and the amount of work that goes into physically loading in this many pumpkins of this magnitude, of this quality, it's almost unbelievable that we actually do accomplish this every single year," he says.
Olton says Rise carvers, a group that includes artists and art school grads, churn out up to 20 pumpkins a day in the run-up to the big show. About 50 illustrators are brought in to work on the pumpkins.
"It usually takes about three weeks to paint them all," he says.
While the show has plenty of pop culture -- Janet Leigh screaming in the "Psycho" shower scene, the Marvel universe, "Peanuts" and the Creature from the Blue Lagoon among them -- Olton says the overriding theme of the show hews to traditional Halloween lore. Though, this being an election year, there will definitely also be Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump pumpkins.
Kaitlin Como, 24, of Queens, sketches out the faces of Rey and Finn from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."
"Some people freehand it, some people like a stencil," she says.
An artist inks the 'Rise of the Jack O'Lanterns' logo on a pumpkin. (Amanda Marzullo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)Among the most popular parts of the jack-o'-lantern show is the sports heroes showcase. Jeremy Lin of the Brooklyn Nets figures on one pumpkin. Odell Beckham Jr., wide receiver for the Giants, claims another.
Using dabs of India ink, artist Rob Thompson of Queens puts the finishing touches on his rendering of Beckham's famous one-handed catch.
The player's arm, expertly shaded, stretches horizontally across the large squash to grip the football. Having already painted 20 pumpkins, Thompson wraps up with some white highlights.
"The white actually ends up what gets carved," says Thompson, 42. He's been creating his own jack-o'-lanterns since he was 9 and will be carving pumpkins live during the show.
The biggest mistake someone could make when working on a pumpkin has little to do with carving technique, he says. Not cleaning the squash before putting brush to skin is the biggest way to derail your jack-o'-lantern design. Rise artists swab their pumpkins with alcohol before embarking on hours of decorative work.