CITYSCAPE FOCUS:When art and vegetables collide

While strolling through the neighborhood wilderness a few years back, Diane Calderwood stumbled upon a small coyote gourd on the ground. Taking it home with her, she remade the small, smooth dried melon into a work of art.

Previously working in only stained glass, Calderwood, 50, of Newport Beach, found the free-flowing nature of vegetable art so in tune with her character that she ditched her previous work in glass and for the last 10 years worked exclusively in gourds.

“I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of artist,” Calderwood said. Her students agreed that Calderwood’s organic personality matched well the art she expresses herself through.

Sunday the Newport Beach mother-of-one instructed five students tucked into one of the many rooms at the Piecemakers Country Store in Costa Mesa on miniature gourd design. The advanced group, composed of women who have taken at least one class from Calderwood previously, constructed tiny Native American-inspired face masks using miniature gourds.

No bigger than a tangerine, the gourds were first sliced in half and smoothed before the ladies got to work. After tracing the outline of the shell’s shape on a white piece of paper, they drew out a pattern, noting what materials would be used on each section of the mask.

“[Calderwood] is an excellent teacher,” pliable like the gourds, Piecemakers regular Sandra Heidlebaugh said. Heidlebaugh, 65, drives down from Lakewood at least twice a week to visit the store, almost always for Calderwood’s classes.

“To me it’s a very forgiving medium,” Heidlebaugh said. Imperfections or mistakes can be “adapted” into the design and “I like that effect,” she said.

After a $35 enrollment fee, student paid a $12 supply fee for the gourds, beads and other items that might be difficult to find. Embossing powder used for coloring and texture on parts of the mask comes in large quantities, too much for a one-time use, Calderwood said.

Students supplied all of their own tools, which did not pose much of a problem for the class. Most have already taken a number of classes from Calderwood in the past and accumulated the proper drill bits, wood burners, and other “weapons of mass destruction,” Calderwood joked.

A certain amount of precision is required to work on the mini-shells that usually grow no bigger than a golf ball.

Abandoning traditional crafting drill and carving bits, Calderwood contacted a dentistry supplier where she found the size that fit her needs. Most of her most precise tools were once intended to remove cavities.

It’s been a lot of trial and error as well, Calderwood said. To carve out a small gutter along the edge of the mask for an inlay of coppery beads, she recommended the use of an inverted cone bit.

Carving a v-shape into the shell provided a better support to hold the tiny beads while not having them fall out of sight in deep u-shaped grooves that other bits would have caused, she said.

The next gourd class is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 12 at Piecemakers. Students will learn how to assemble and decorate neck purses made from gourd shells. The instruction will include the Ukrainian Egg design technique, kistka.