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I had a friend who made a fortune painting Santas and Witches and Pumpkins on Santas a few decades ago. I still have some of them. What these sisters do is definitely fine art.
Good post about another art form/medium nk. I've known a few gourd artists who made beautiful
pieces and the one on the link is lovely. It does take some time to prepare a gourd (not a simple
task especially with cleaning/preparing the inside).
Gourds last a long time. They were used for making some of the earliest banjos, and a few, not as much as 200 years old, are still around.
There is a big resurgence going on with gourd banjos these days. As in the past, some are highly decorated.
Here's a clip of Mike Seeger playing one. It was new when the video was taken, but it was made in an ancient manner.
Here's another clip of Mike playing in the same style on a modern banjo. The banjo itself is 100 years old, but is an early example of banjos just like it that are being made today.
Gourds are also used to make Indian sitars and scrods, and the Arabian lute family has many gourd-bodied lutes. Some of these instruments are gobstopping fancy.
While the sitar looks massive, and is huge, and can only be played in a sitting position, the instrument actually only weighs as much as an average large guitar. The gourds are used for 2 sound chambers and the neck, which is a gourd grown in a mold to make it grow long and narrow, and then is cut in half lengthwise on a sitar. If made of wood, it would weigh around 40 pounds or more.
Gourds were also used to make the first Spanish guitars. The guitar itself was originally an Arabian lute with a waisted body. While the gourd was eventually dropped by guitar makers, the shape was revived once more by an American company, Kaman, in the 1960s. The Kaman corporation made helicopter rotor blades from fiberglass, and it's owner was a guitar player. Mr. Kaman was a scientific guy, and he decided the gourd's shape made for superior acoustic qualities, so he used what he knew- fiberglass- to build his gourd-shaped guitar bodies.
They were very successful. The Ovation guitar is still being made today. They were the favorites of Glenn Campbell, the Doobie Bros., and just about every other rock band who used acoustic guitars, and a lot of jazz players, like Charlie Byrd, also liked them a lot.
I've always wondered what the Ovation guitar would be if Mr. Kaman had been a gardener, not a helicopter blade maker.
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I've known a few gourd artists who made beautiful
