Go big or gourd home: Woman carves 300+ pumpkins for Halloween lawn display

Alana Mattingly has a passion for carving, so much so that every Halloween, her front yard is filled with hundreds of intricately sliced faux pumpkins amassed over several decades.

Mattingly, 78, used to carve real pumpkins, but after spending hours creating handcrafted gourds that depict cats, Dolly Parton, Jesus Christ and even Abraham Lincoln — which would subsequently collapse and rot — she decided she wanted to keep her works of art.

“I ran into these (fake pumpkins) and I just started carving them,” she said. “I have thousands of patterns and I go through and pick out the ones I like. Every year I say I’m not going to carve any more and then I see them in the store and I grab them.”

Her home in the 400 block of Wellesley SE is filled with more than 300 of the carved creations that she brings out each year for Halloween. The pumpkins of varying designs line her front yard, filling the street with vibrant colors and recognizable characters.

“I’ve done it all,” she said. “Good, horror, bad, just all kinds of characters. Some are very whimsical.”

Mattingly added, “But there’s no dirty ones.”

As the designs get increasingly more intricate, so does the work to properly display them in their full glory, she said.

With help from family friend Fabricio Carrillo, the pumpkins are pulled from a shed that’s nearly bursting with the decorated gourds Mattingly makes. It takes Carrillo between three and four days to set up the pumpkins and add lights to make them glow.

“Every year, he tries to improve them for me,” Mattingly said. “He puts wires in so they don’t blow over and he puts them at an angle to where, when you’re walking, you can see them better.”

Mattingly starts the creative process by finding stencils online that she likes. Sometimes, the stencils are classic Halloween designs like witches flying on a broomstick or calavera-style skulls. Other times, Mattingly finds herself carving characters like Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” or Darth Maul from “Star Wars.”

Mattingly said she uses a surgical blade to carve out her designs, which can take several days to complete. If a piece breaks, Mattingly salvages it using glue and a layer of Mod Podge to seal it in place.

Each year, more pumpkins are carved and added — the likenesses of Martin Luther King, Edgar Allen Poe and the Statue of Liberty — to fill Mattingly’s lawn in the hopes of delighting trick-or-treaters and passersby.