About the Artist

Well, I have been reluctant to do this page, but upon prompting from various people, here I am!

My name is Alex Wer and I started this "Orange Empire" about 2 years ago on accident. My wife asked me to carve a pumpkin for her office Open House. I've always enjoyed carving pumpkins so I thought it would be fun. Since it was a few weeks until Halloween, my options were to carve a real pumpkin and have it die within a week, or try my hand at craft pumpkins which would last forever (I know, I haven't "lived forever" yet, so how do I really know?). It was a simple logo and script and was a big hit at the Open House. Soon I had about 35 orders for business logos and even children's portraits! Not even knowing WHAT I was doing, The Pumpkin Geek was born!!!!

I started experimenting with what is called "4 color" carving...1 area is completely cutout, 2 different levels of depth, and finally, a layer untouched for the darkest portion of the image. I found this style gave me great versatility and the most realistic final product and seemed to impress my clients! As I gained more business, I was able to fine tune my process and create more elaborate carves. Each pumpkin is hand carved and takes anywhere from 4-6 hours, depending on the complexity.

Last year, The Pumpkin Geek got to go on the road!!! I was able to be a vendor at the National Star Trek Convention in August - Las Vegas (thus the MANY Star Trek carves!!!). My wife, Rebecca, and I had such an exciting venture and definitely went "Where no one has gone before"!!!!!! There were over 10,000 fans in attendance this year over the 4 day event and William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Zachary Quinto, and over 50 other iconic Trek actors were guest speakers. Some of the actors even came to our booth to get pictures of themselves with MY carves!!!! The fans were wonderful and really appreciated the detail of my work!

For now, this is all I have, but I will be updating pics so you can "get to know" me a bit more....

Here's a few tidbits about me you may be interested in (most of my friends aren't, but I had to put SOMETHING here!):