Meet the Man Behind the Scotts Valley Glass Pumpkin Patch
By Jon Chown
He’s not the Great Pumpkin that Linus was looking for every Halloween, but Chris Johnson is the man behind Scotts Valley’s first Glass Pumpkin Patch, the artist who planted the seed.
Like most things, it wasn’t a completely original idea. Over the hill, Palo Alto has been hosting the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch for 18 years where thousands of glass pumpkins attract even more thousands of people. Johnson had participated in that event before, and being a resident of Felton, it was only natural to get a glass pumpkin patch going closer to home.
He approached Scotts Valley Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sharolynn Ullestad with the idea last year during the Scotts Valley Art & Wine Festival and it grew from there, culminating in the Oct. 5-6 festival at MacDorsa Park. It begins at 10 a.m. Saturday and ends the following day at 5 p.m.
“There are several artists involved, but probably most of the pumpkins you see will be mine,” Johnson said during a Scotts Valley Chamber of Commerce mixer held at his studio on Chanticleer Avenue in mid-September.
Ullestad said she wasn’t quite sure what to think when Johnson first broached the subject.
“He said, ‘let’s do a glass pumpkin patch’ and I said ‘what’s that?’ It sounded kind of strange to me,” Ullestad confessed, but at Johnson’s request, she went to Palo Alto later that year to check it out.
“And I saw all these pumpkins — and all these people all over the park buying these pumpkins,” she said. “Oh my gosh! We could have people from Monterey, Santa Cruz, and from over the hill to see our patch.”
Johnson moved to the area in 2007. He grew up in San Jose before his journey with his art began. He has studied with many Italian and American glass masters, and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the studio manager at the California College of the Arts and more.
“I’ve blown glass all over the bloody place,” Johnson said. “I’ve worked for a number of artists, some Italian masters, but mostly I’m self taught. Mostly, I just kind of figured out how to do it on my own.”
But now he enjoys helping others figure it out. After struggling to find an apprenticeship during his youth, Johnson said he vowed that when he had a studio, he would help change things.
“I have people come in, I educate them about glass and show them what we’re doing here,” he said. “One of the things I’m doing is turning this into a teaching studio.
“Years ago I tried to find myself an apprenticeship and I could not find anybody who was interested at all, and I determined back then that if I had a studio, I would have apprentices, regardless of the fact that they cost you money and you have to spend time with them and all that, because I like to mentor,” he continued. “Also, I like cross pollination, so by inviting other artists into this space to work, we combine our ideas and we get cool things out of it. So that’s the whole idea.”
Johnson has a rotating group of about nine apprentices. Some, he said, have moved on to other things, some just come and go.
“It depends on what they are doing with their life. One of my favorite apprentices has two full-time jobs and goes to UCSC, so she doesn’t have as much time as she’d like,” he said.
Some of the pumpkins on display at the glass pumpkin patch were created by his apprentices. Johnson said he can get a little tired of creating pumpkins, but there is no denying their popularity.
“There seems to be an insatiable appetite for them. I really, dearly wish I had something that sold as well as pumpkins,” he said as he walked over to a table filled with a variety of his pumpkin creations, all with different iridescent colors, the beautiful stems flowing out the top.
“But I do love them because look, this is just a selection of designs I’ve come up with for pumpkins and this is not all of them. So it’s really astounding what you can do with just the one form and when you get a dozen artists together all working on pumpkins, you get a zillion different designs.”
So Johnson is excited about the future of the Scotts Valley Glass Pumpkin Patch, especially with the Scotts Valley Chamber of Commerce taking the lead.
“I’m not the greatest organizer in the world. I’m not an event guy. I’m an artist. I like to make things, selling things, not so much … but I’m getting better at it.”