The approach to Halloween means CSArts Visual Arts students are painting their way into the spooky season. Each year students take simple craft pumpkins home and bring back incredible pieces of art, all part of CSArt’s annual Painted Pumpkin Auction. This year, students came up with a wide variety of innovative designs. Some were sculpted, stacked, hollowed out; some were big, some small, some even sideways. Many featured faces, windows, dioramas, eyeballs, characters from various media and more. Students used paint, clay, glue, and paper to transform the gourds into “gourd”-geously wicked art pieces. Participants shared some reasons why they liked painting the pumpkins and attending the event:
Freedom of creativity, because you can do pretty much anything.”
says Elise Hsu (VA ‘26)
The food. It’s pretty diverse and there’s also gluten free food; it’s hard to get good gluten free food.”
says Yaretzi García Lopez (VA ‘25)
“Halloween is one of my favorite holidays so it’s really fun to celebrate it with my classmates.” -Bonita Hefty (VA ‘28)
Meeting different people, and I feel like the games were fun to play with other people that you might have not met normally. And it was really fun to see all of the pumpkins.”
says Luca Ramos (VA ‘27)
The patch of Halloween-themed pumpkins were displayed in the school lobby, where people could place their bets on their favorite design. On the night of the Spooky Painted Pumpkin Bash, students, families and staff joined together in the school cafeteria for a night of costumes, refreshments, and games. Some attendees of the shared which pumpkin they felt was the scariest:
Probably the one titled Yummy. It just scared me, it made me feel itchy,”
said one.
I think the scariest for me [was] the lady’s head with the flowing hair coming out. That was really creepy. And the maggot one was a close second,”
another one added.
There was one where it was carved out and it had people in it. Not a lot of them were really carved out like that one was, so I thought that was different, that was like ‘ooh, that’s scary’.”
said Khai Dimaculangan (VOC ‘26)
At the end of the event, following a thunderous drumroll from the audience, the winning painted pumpkins were announced. The awards given out featured a number of different categories:
- Cutest: “Mickey Spooky Treats” by Jayden Vosberg (VA ‘28)
- Scariest: “Pumpkin Puppy” by Chanel Garcia (VA ‘27)
- Funniest: “Little C. Pumpkin” by Faye Cardella (VA ‘25)
- Most Creative: “Butterflies” by Lilyana Mortellaro (VA ‘26)
- Most Realistic: “Yummy” by Jiashan Lyu (VA ‘28)
Congratulations to the winners and all other participants for their hard work, creativity, and artistic embodiment of the Halloween spirit!
CSArts, A Magnet for Creativity