Two Hixson artists make gourd-eous art for fall

Artist Carrie Hewitt remembers a time in her childhood when her creative impulses began to spark.

Hewitt, 53, who grew up on a 60-acre family ranch about an hour’s drive north of San Diego, says her great-grandmother would place an object on the dining room table for Carrie and her cousins to draw. It was a way to occupy the children, but also something of a talent hunt inside a family that was filled with painters, jewelry makers and gourd artists.

“Draw what you see and not what you know,” the family matriarch would instruct the children. It was a lesson in realism over symbolism that has influenced Hewitt’s work ever since.

Hewitt and her mother, Pamala Prueitt, are Hixson-based artists who are experts in transforming gourds into objects of art — a genre influenced by their Native American ancestry. There is Choctaw and Blackfoot blood in their family, and the materials and methods they use are part of an ancestral tradition.

Gourd painting is a centuries-old art that, in primitive form, was accomplished with a hot nail for shading and berry dye for coloring. In its modern iteration, artists use heat guns to produce blacks and shades of grey, Dremel tools for texturing and ink dyes and acrylic paint for coloring. Hewitt also uses stones — everything from turquoise to creek rock — to make elaborate inlays. One of her pieces has been on display at the Hunter Museum of American Art.

“There are gourds on every continent,” Prueitt explains. “[Civilizations] everywhere used them for pottery.”

Some of Carrie Hewitt’s most vivid childhood memories are of attending Native American pow-wows, where her mother sold her painted gourds.

“I grew up sleeping underneath the tables, listening to [Native American] drums,” Hewitt says.

Although artistic as a child, she resisted becoming a gourd artist, like her mom, until her teen years.

“One day, she came around the corner with two big bags of gourds, and I was so excited,” Prueitt says. “I can’t think of a better life than a mother and daughter traveling like we do. We have so much fun, and we meet so many people.”

At age 19, Hewitt filled in for her sick mother at a gourd-painting instructional class, and it sparked a partnership that is still going strong. The two have done gourd-painting classes in at least a half-dozen states and hope to begin offering classes in Hixson this fall. (E-mail creativegourdart@yahoo.com for information.)

They have taught gourd-painting classes in Alabama, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, California and Arizona. In a typical scenario, they teach a seminar for three days at a gourd festival. The popularity of gourd painting is rising in the Eastern United States, they say.

Hewitt sells her smaller pieces for $50 or $60, but some of her larger (and commissioned) artwork can range up to several hundred dollars. Some of her pieces include custom portraiture.

Hewitt and her mother moved to Tennessee from California 13 years ago, and they say that they hope that opening a school here will help spread the art in a part of the country that has not been steeped in the tradition.

On the amateur level, learning to decorate gourds can be done on many levels, and many students find it to be a relaxing craft, Hewitt says.

“It’s nice, therapeutic artwork,” she says. “You get into the zone. It’s quiet. You get lost in your artwork. It’s therapy.”