Meet the pumpkin-carving 'Picasso' celebrating 40 years of Halloween art

Mike Valladao has been chiseling whimsical faces and comical creatures into pumpkins for more than four decades.By day he is a systems engineer at a cybersecurity company, but when fall arrives and the leaves begin changing color, he slips into his alter ego, “Farmer Mike," also known as the “Picasso of Pumpkin Carvers.”Wearing his trademark orange overalls and farmer hat, Farmer Mike has sculpted hundreds of gourds into ghoulish faces, seaside landscapes, witches, dragons and pop culture figures such as Yoda and Charlie Brown.He does not have any formal artistic training, but he is always looking for inspiration.Ideas come to him from looking at art in a museum or just walking down the street.Mike Valladao is also known as ‘Farmer Mike’“Sometimes I’ll look at somebody and I’ll think, oh, I like the teeth or I like ears or the way the nostrils flare," Valladao said.This year, “Farmer Mike” celebrated 40 years of Halloween artistry at the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival.The festival is held in mid-October and is best known for its giant pumpkin weigh-off.Requests from across the USAt the two-day festival on the coast south of San Francisco, Valladao works on stage so people can watch.His artistic hobby began by accident, after he started growing big pumpkins at his San Jose home in the mid-1980s.He did not know what to do with the massive gourds, so he pulled out a knife and started slicing faces into them.Valladao carves into a giant pumpkin (AP)“I’m an engineer by trade and I tend to look at it as building something the same way I would build a piece of hardware, one layer at a time,” he said.In 1986, festival organizers saw a picture of Valladao's pumpkins and invited him to showcase his carving skills in Half Moon Bay.His family opened the town's first feed and seed store in the 19th century.‘A little more magic’He once grew an 800-pound (363-kilogram) pumpkin, but it was a lot of work, so he does not participate in the giant pumpkin contest.His art has since taken him to different parts of the country, including an appearance on The Tonight Show.He has got requests to carve pumpkins at venues such as the San Diego Zoo, the California Academy of Sciences and the State Fair of Texas.'Farmer Mike' in action (AP)He uses Atlantic pumpkins that weigh from 100 to 1,000 pounds (45 to 454 kilograms).Their thick skins allow him to cut protruding facial features shallow or deep.“It’s really about the illusion of depth,” Valladao said. “I can make it so that it’s three-dimensional, such that the eyes are inset and the nose sticks out. So it’s a little bit of carving, but it’s just adding a little more magic to it.”Valladao said he doesn't name his creations because he recognizes the ephemeral nature of his art, which only lasts a few days.“It never really bothers me when a pumpkin starts to age because in some cases they’ll build character,” Valladao said.And there are always more pumpkins to be carved.After 40 years at Half Moon Bay, Valladao doesn't have any plans to hang up his carving knives."It’s fun, it’s enjoyable and, quite frankly, it’s a piece of me," he said.