I don`t know of anyone else around here who grows gourds. I have a lot of local customers, but they`ve never mentioned anything of a patch to me. There`s a SC Gourd Society meeting at Table Rock State Park this summer. I thought about crashing that, but I`d probably just frighten everyone...

Georgia has several patches in the state. We have just started our patch in Atlanta and had our first meeting this month. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to have the Secretary of The Georgia Gourd Society live close by and she is the one that did just about everything to get our patch going. At our first meeting she brought her supply of Gilders Paste, passed it out and each of us used whatever color we need. We took a small gourd to the patch meeting and each of us drew whatever we wanted to use the paste on and Pat taught us how to use the paste. Pat put a lot of work into the patch and got the use of a room in the museum to have our first meeting. She passed out a small brochure asking us to fill out our names and address and to check off a list on the back of things we wanted to learn - coiling, carving, chipping, etc. With this information she will be able to get teachers to teach. Our president is a great gourd artist. He has several things in the High Museum (I think that the right museum)in Washington, DC. Your first thing to do is to get someone who is dedicated enough to do all of the things that Pat has done.

Well, Kevin, I checked out the photos on your member page and you certainly do grow lots of nice gourds. You're welcome to visit our Gourd Patch any time you want. We may have to put you on our speakers list.

Nonnie, thanks for your response. We plan to follow the guidelines from another successfully launched Gourd Patch, and hopefully in a few months we'll have our core group, then begin with some hands-on programs.

I have led several gourd workshops, using a sponge painting project; decoupage; a beginning woodburning class and most recently an advanced woodburning class.
They are mostly done through the local library, and I always have more participants than I can realistically handle. I have an assistant for the woodburning classes, but still find myself run ragged at the end of the day.

I know of several artists who use different mediums and hope to bring them in as guest artists.

Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Jan