CLINTON - You'd have to be out of your gourd to miss the Illinois Gourd Festival and Competition, but lots of people did.

The two-day event, hosted at Clinton Junior High School, saw so-so crowds Saturday, but visitors were decidedly thin on the ground come Sunday.

"People just don't know a lot about gourds," explains Mattoon gourd artist Debbie Wiles, 55. "And there are some beautiful ones here."

She had quite a few of them herself - gourds the size of beach balls exquisitely painted and carved to look like giant jack-o'-lanterns. Others, as tiny as golf balls, were transformed into finely detailed Santas or plump snowmen, the painting following every curve and line of nature's already fantastic designs.

A few exhibitor tables across from Wiles, the stunning American Indian-themed creations of Ralph Irish took center stage. Irish, a 58-year-old special education teacher from near Macomb, makes gourd rattles with handles that end in real turkey and coyote feet, decked out in rawhide and rabbit fur decoration and stained to look as if they were unearthed from Cahokia Mounds on some archeological dig.

Or how about gourd thunder drums, which sound like thunder really is bottled up inside them, or a highly decorated gourd rain stick where cascading beads uncannily imitate the noise of a steady downpour?

"Now who wants to look at gourds?" asks Irish with an ironic smile, as he walks by a competition display where several of his efforts took blue first-place ribbons. "It's hard to get people to come out and see what we can do."

But it did mean those who did show up were spoiled by choice, with almost everything for sale and some prices as low as $5 or less. "This is the first time I've been to the festival," said visitor Paula Hany, 48, who lives in Saybrook near Bloomington. "And I'm glad I came."

Some 15 experts brought their wares and showed off the range of what can be done to transmute gourds into art. "As well as painting, you can wood-burn them and you can carve them," said Bonnie Cox, 69, the newly elected president of the Illinois Gourd Society, which claims 163 members. "You can treat gourds like a piece of wood, and some can be as much as an inch thick."

Crowds are likely to be thicker at next year's festival, too, according to Cox. "It's going to be held at the Chicago Botanic Garden," she said. "And they can have 10,000 visitors in one day."

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