Extreme Pumpkin Carving: The Rise Of The Jack O'Lanterns
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Pumpkin display (Rise of The Jack O'Lanterns)
Tom Olton carved his corporate logo onto a pumpkin, and it was so well done that his boss and long time friend, Mike Pollock, asked him what else he could carve.
“I could do just about anything really,” syas Olton.
When Pollock later sold his start-up tech company, he decided to make a career change and asked Olton if he would be interested in joining him. Pollock wanted to create a Halloween experience, inspired by Olton’s impressive carving skills.
“He invested every dime he had ever made in his entire life,” says Olton. “And when we had our first show, we didn’t know if 10 or 1,000 people would come, and we ended up drawing over 50,000 people.”
Today, this Halloween experience is known as The Rise of The Jack O’Lanterns. It started three years ago in New York, and is now a bicoastal show with its second location in Southern California.
The Rise of The Jack O’Lanterns features 5,000 hand-carved pumpkins, spanned out over a third of a mile long trail. Within the 5,000 pumpkins there are roughly 150 specialty pumpkins that Olton refers to as, “art pumpkins.” Art pumpkins are complex illustrations with intricate details and designs.
Olton believes that before The Rise of The Jack O’Lanterns there were only two types of Halloween events.
“You have haunted houses and pumpkin picking/hayrides,” says Olton. “What we realized was that people were doing things with there families at Halloween but they were almost always leaving half of their family at home because either they were too young to go to the haunted house or they were too old to want to go for a hayride.”
The Rise of The Jack O’Lanterns designs their shows so that there is something for everyone. The pumpkins are created for different genres and themes, ranging from cartoon characters to celebrities to athletes, and more.
“We wanted to create an experience that you could bring absolutely everyone in your family to,” says Olton. “It is legitimately all ages, it is legitimately a family experience.”
Frozen characters on pumpkins (Rise of The Jack O'Lanterns)
By its second year, Rise of The Jack O’Lanterns brought in over 100,000 visitors, and this year they are projecting to surpass 200,000 combined ticket sales between L.A. and New York.
Olton says he hopes to expand this pumpkin spectacle in future years. Though he says it might be ambitious, the team is trying to have four to six locations open across the country by next year.
“Exponential growth is our goal,” says Olton.
Olton is particularly motivated by his Yelp reviews, which he describes as being split down the middle.
“Half of them are fantastic and the other half are awful,” says Olton. “I have people accusing us of laser cutting jack o’lanterns, of projecting images onto them with a projector that they can’t see, or printing out vinyl decals and applying them, and all of that stuff, while very flattering, is patently false.”
Celebrity pumpkins (The Rise of The Jack O'Lanterns)
Each of the art pumpkins takes roughly four hours to create. The carvers must first draw the image on paper, and then configure the picture to look realistic when carved on the surface of a pumpkin.
Olton asserts that while someone could be a great artist on paper, it takes a whole other level of talent to be able to translate that onto a pumpkin.
“People look at our work and don’t believe that it is humanly possible,” says Olton.
First time visitor, Tristin Baxter, says that what she saw was beyond anything she could have imagined.
"I was expecting something a lot simpler, like all just basic pumpkins, not sculptures made from pumpkins," explains Baxter. "Overall I thought it was a really cool event, and was definitely not like any other Halloween event I've ever been to."
The event runs through November 2, and The Rise of The Jack O’Lanterns wants to remind everyone that tickets are only sold online. Halloween is almost over, but the festivities continue for just a couple more days.
Reach Staff Reporter Margaux Farrell here or follow her on Twitter here.
