By Sara Anne Donnelly
Photos by Mat Trogner
From our October 2024 issue
Every year, around Halloween, sculptor William Janelle would earn a little extra money carving faces on gourds in front of crowds at shopping centers, theme parks, and fall festivals.
It wasn’t really his thing.
“When I’m in front of people, I can’t produce something of a quality that I’m happy with,” Janelle said on a recent morning, leaning against a workbench in the wood-paneled cabin studio on his Bridgton property he calls his “Fortress of Solitude.” Plus, most of his demonstrations were outdoors, and the cold started to get to him. “That and I’ve had my fair share of not-nice people with the pumpkin carving.” Once, a girl picked up a small hand he’d chiseled out of a gourd and threw it at him. Another time, a man shouted, “He’s picking its nose!” while Janelle was hollowing out a nostril. “After that,” Janelle said, “I’d had enough of the public.”
These days, Janelle uses pumpkins and other winter squashes as a medium for experimenting with the faces that enliven his wooden sculptures. Many of his jack-o’-lanterns, which he carves using clay-sculpting tools, are given away as gifts or spend their brief lives grinning (or grimacing) on the front steps of the house he shares with his wife, Loraine. “Gourds are so transitory. They decay quickly,” he said. “So I don’t have to worry about satisfying other people. I can just carve for myself.”
A former finish carpenter who incorporated carvings into cabinetry and mantels, Janelle transitioned to sculpting in 2007. From a single block of hardwood clamped to a work table, he carves faces, “wood spirits,” birds, and animals with notably lifelike expressions using a mallet and chisel. Recently, he added handcrafted wooden electric and cigar-box guitars to the mix. One guitar features a frowning bearded fellow with eyes beset with deep bags on its headstock; another bears a relief carving of a stony-eyed bald eagle on its body. Even the Santas chiseled on Janelle’s Christmas ornaments, fashioned from thick, bark-covered branches, look a little mournful with their hollow eyes and slack mouths.
“One of the things that I found I was lacking when I first started doing this was making something that people can see themselves in,” Janelle said. Eventually, he realized he needed to put “a little of myself” into every face, especially in the eyes. “As an artist, if you can’t carve eyes or paint eyes, you should just hang it up. Or paint landscapes.” He begins every face by gouging out eye sockets, then a nose and eyebrows. The shape of the wood informs the shape of the face. Where and how much the material gives under his chisel influences the expression, resulting in, perhaps, crow’s feet or high, smooth cheekbones. He works alone for hours (even Loraine isn’t allowed to see in-progress pieces), blasting music that sometimes also impacts what he creates. The hard-rock band Tool might be the soundtrack for a grouchy old man, while a rousing Foo Fighters anthem may beget a rascal. “Sometimes the wood tells me what it’s going to be, and sometimes I tell the wood what it’s going to be,” Janelle said. “More often than not, it’s a fusion of the two.”
In 2016, a pumpkin’s orange skin inspired one of his first gourd carvings. It featured a riled Donald Trump, his mouth curled and shouting, his coiffed hair blown back and grooved with comb marks. Since then, the range of expressions Janelle has recorded in gourd flesh — sullen, surprised, terrified, tickled — rivals an emoji list. One jack-o’-lantern was shown “eating” an apple that itself had a face wearing a fearful, contorted expression. “That’s the beauty of Halloween — you can do these bizarre, experimental things,” Janelle said. “The things I do with pumpkins I don’t dare do in wood.”
William Janelle’s work (from $325) is available for sale at Center Lovell’s Harvest Gold Gallery, Belfast’s Mainely Gallery, Kennebunkport’s Wright Gallery, and on his website.
