This Just In – Breaking Giant Pumpkin Spider News!

Posted in Around the Garden, People on October 27 2011, by Rustin Dwyer

Breaking developments in the world of giant pumpkin spiders! — How often do you get to write a sentence like that in all seriousness?

Artist Michael Natiello will be here this weekend carving up one of the world’s largest pumpkins. (You might know him as the man behind the Great Jack ‘O Lantern Blaze as well as the Haunted Pumpkin Garden here in the Children’s Adventure Garden).

That’s not the breaking news, though.

As we already told you, his plans are to carve a giant spider out of a 1,704.5 lb pumpkin, but we weren’t sure exactly what to expect. We just received word that Michael plans to reference Ray Villafane’s dramatic pumpkin sculpture as well a concept sketch (above) of what the piece will roughly look like.

According to Natiello:

I want to establish a dialogue with Ray’s piece (hopefully it will last into the weekend)–concept is that the spider caught one of the zombies that just hatched out of the egg….

Sounds like some seriously spooky stuff. So come check out the Garden this weekend to see this monstrosity take shape. Natiello will be on hand all day Saturday and Sunday to transform some of the pumpkins into amazing sculptures, as well as a whole host of other programming.