Pumpkin artist Jim Bille will be a new addition to the N.C. State Fair in 2024. But if you’re thinking he’s carving ordinary jack-o-lanterns, think again. Bille’s work is definitely more like sculpting than carving. You’ll get to watch him in action as he brings new creations to life each evening of the fair in the Flower and Garden Show area. With each passing day, he’ll have more finished works out on display.
Bille has lived in north Raleigh for more than 20 years, so some folks may have seen him in the area at places like Phillips Farm in Cary or the Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh. His pumpkin art has taken him further away as well – to the Denver Botanical Garden and to the tenth season of Halloween Wars on the Food Network. (His team “Killer Cakerz” was eliminated at the end of the second episode.)
Season 10 aired in the fall of 2020, Bille said, when he was still relatively new to the art of pumpkin carving/sculpting. Now he’s been doing it for a little more than seven years, refining his craft and improving along the way. It all started when he saw some work by Ray Villafane and became immediately interested.
“By trade and schooling, I am a medical illustrator and animator, and that’s my day job,” Bille said. “I’ve always been a big fan of Halloween, Halloween makeup and pumpkins, etcetera, etcetera, and about eight years ago or so I started seeing Ray Villafane’s pumpkins popping up online, and eventually I just sat down and said I’ve gotta learn how to do this.”
His first attempts were not great, he said, but eventually he found more and more tutorials online, and he continued practicing until he got pretty good. Bille believes that anyone could do work similar to his, and he hopes that people who see his pumpkins will be inspired to try it for themselves. He even says the tools used don’t have to be fancy. There are certainly specialized tools, but even a simple paring knife could work. It’s really just about what is available and what the carver is comfortable with using.
“It can be taught, and after that it’s just practice, practice, practice. I mean I learned online, so surely everybody else can,” Bille said jokingly.
In saying that, Bille doesn’t give himself enough credit for his artistic ability. He does acknowledge that his understanding of anatomy may help when it comes to crafting facial features or other body parts in larger pieces. That knowledge and his creativity combined with practice has resulted in the work he can produce today. Since practice is usually limited to pumpkin season though, he crams as much as he can into the fall each year, challenging himself to get better every fall.
In fact, his desire to get more pumpkins while they were in season is what led him to the public demonstrations he does these days. Buying more and more pumpkins for his hobby was getting expensive – still fun, but expensive. So to keep enjoying it without breaking the bank, he offered to carve in front of customers at north Raleigh’s Homewood Nursery so that he could get free pumpkins.
The trade worked out, so customers got to see him crafting his art while he got free pumpkins and more practice to keep getting better. That led to other public carving at places like Phillips Farm. Bille still sources pumpkins from places that will give them to him for free, but he also buys them from anywhere he can, including the State Farmers Market.
The fact that people enjoy watching him work is no surprise to Bille.
“No [I’m not surprised] because I’ve been them. I saw this online and was like, ‘wow, that is so cool.’ That’s what got me to try it was just that at the time I hadn’t seen anything like that before,” Bille said. “You see this sort of sculpting carving, and I’m right there with anyone else, and there’s even some carvers out there today where I’m still that little kid looking at it going, ‘wow, that is so cool!’”
How to watch Jim Bille at the 2024 N.C. State Fair:
- When: Every evening, 6-9 p.m.
- You could stop by multiple times to see his progress during an evening visit to the fair, or come back on another day to see the finished products on display.
- Where: Flower and Garden Show
- Bille will be in a different part of the Flower and Garden Show each night, so you may have to search the grounds to find his exact location within the show area.