THE PICASSO OF PUMPKIN CARVING

On a recent afternoon, Ray Villafane studied a pumpkin face that looked, by turns, like a sad cartoon Popeye, a vampire and the actor Gérard Depardieu. Hating it, he spun the pumpkin to its other side and started over, hacking in bold strokes at its outer skin.
"Some of my best pumpkins happen when I'm about to throw them away," he said. He then carved an ogre getting its teeth knocked out mid-punch, with a spot for his fist to deliver the blow. (click below to read more)


Mr. Villafane, who makes a living sculpting wax prototypes for toy action-figures, spends much of his time following detailed specs for companies such as DC Comics. But for at least one month a year, he experiments on the blank canvas of his pumpkins, creations that include a monster covered in snakes, a skull emerging under folds of unzipping flesh and an alien with claws and razor teeth.
This month, Mr. Villafane, 42 years old, could be seen competing on the Food Network's "Halloween Wars," a baking-and-carving contest for which he recently created a life-size pumpkin zombie oozing seeds and guts. He travels for much of October, charging $2,500-per-day for carving gigs around the country.
Ray Villafane works as a sculptor by day. But this time of year, he spends his nights carving and scraping away at orange flesh until something gruesome emerges: gargoyles, aliens and other intricate creatures that make Jack O'Lanterns look like child's play. See a video of him at work.
Kristi Russell, president of Metal Flowers Media, the production company that found the contestants for "Halloween Wars," called Mr. Villafane "the aristocracy of pumpkin carving." He won two other Food Network pumpkin-carving shows in 2008 and 2010.
One of his goals is to carve all year. Last spring, he traveled to New Zealand to take advantage of fall in that country—allowing him to double his usual pumpkin-carving time.
At his home in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, Ariz., Mr. Villafane frequently stays up all night working, guzzling Monster energy drinks under the gaze of his green tree python, Jezebel, who lives in a glass case near his work table. He loves the quiet and the sense of isolation. "It's like I have deeper thoughts at night," he said. The sculptor keeps the blinds down—"My dream home is a cave," he said—as he toils under fluorescent lamps with CNN or the Cartoon Network playing.
The pumpkin itself can alter what he carves. One of his favorite works, a football linebacker snarling under a face mask, came to him after seeing a pumpkin with a helmet-like top. Sometimes a single cut will create a shadow that allows him to see a face or new concept. "It's like looking for shapes in clouds," he said.
It can take him 12 hours to carve a pumpkin. Over time, he said, "the actual process is easier, but the ideas are harder." When he gets blocked, he often starts making bold cuts, digging into the pumpkin aggressively in hopes of seeing something he couldn't find before. It's a risk: If he breaks through to the middle, the pumpkin is ruined. Another habit when he's stymied: lying on a lounge chair by his backyard pool and looking up at the stars.
A native of Queens, N.Y., and a graduate of New York's School of Visual Arts, Mr. Villafane first began carving about 12 years ago, while working as an art teacher in Bellaire, Mich. On a whim, he made a few pumpkins for students. Soon, parents were leaving pumpkins outside his classroom, paying him $25 to carve elaborate faces for their office parties. During class, he let the kids play while he worked.
He began carving comic-book figures in 2004 and eventually left teaching. But it was the pumpkin photos on his website, instead of the models of Batman or Wonder Woman, that got him noticed. He now takes custom orders, offers carving lessons by Skype, sells a how-to DVD and is working on a book and calendar on pumpkin carving. Last year he was invited to the White House to work his magic.
Mr. Villafane's tattoos include skulls and the Play-Doh logo (he loves the scent of the stuff so much he buys Play-Doh cologne). When he's carving, he tracks pumpkin shards all over the house that he shares with his wife, Tammi, and their blended family of six kids, as well as a deaf English bulldog and a German-shepherd puppy. He allows his two small boys to "fix" pumpkins that he messes up by hacking at them with his tools.
This Halloween, Mr. Villafane will probably carve a pumpkin for the front stoop, though he's exhausted by the time Oct. 31 rolls around. He's mulled the idea of pickling his work, but its temporary nature is one of the things that he loves most about it. "When you don't ever have it again," he said, "you almost cherish it more."