Dennis Franzen is an accomplished artist — his work has been featured on billboards and commercials. His sculpture entitled “America’s Hero,” featuring the image of a firefighter, has even been featured prominently on several episodes of the hit TV show, Chicago Fire.
Franzen, based in Hanover Park, prides himself on being a versatile artist — he is an illustrator who also paints and works in metal, wood, and glass.
Three years ago, he discovered another medium for his art: pumpkins.
With the same tools he uses to sculpt clay, Franzen began creating whimsical and fantastic creatures from pumpkins — and folks started noticing.
He’s done local appearances at garden nurseries and pumpkin patches, doing live pumpkin carving demonstrations. But he knew he’d stumbled onto something big when he was hired to carve pumpkins at Soldier Field before a Chicago Bears game. “That was my first professional pumpkin carving gig,” he says. “I carved 3 pumpkins in two hours. People watched me do the carving.”
Last year, Franzen was flown out to Palm Beach, Florida to carve for a company’s Halloween party. This year, he’ll be at the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival in San Diego.
Last year, while getting a COVID test before flying on an airplane, Franzen ended up showing pictures of his pumpkins to a nurse who had asked him about his travels.
“She said, ‘Oh my gosh!’”, says Franzen. “The nurse in the other room came over to see what was going on. She said, ‘You gotta look at these pumpkins!’ Then the people in the waiting room said, ‘Can we see?’ Before long, I had the whole office looking at my pumpkin pictures, passing them around,” laughs Franzen.
Franzen admits he is both mystified and delighted at the attention his pumpkin carvings garner. “I’ve actually gotten a lot of illustration work out of it. It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s been a big surprise.”
A tip from Franzen: Bigger pumpkins allow you to make deeper cuts to show the contrast between the outer skin and the inner flesh.
But just like Halloween itself, the pumpkins last for only a fleeting moment in time.
“After 3-5 days, they start turning bad, but sometimes they look really cool as they turn bad,” he says. ”Maybe that’s why people like them so much – once they’re here, they’re gone soon.”
To learn more about Dennis Franzen and his art, visit www.dennisfranzen.com.
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