VEGETABLE CRAFT GOURD ENOUGH FOR THESE ARTISTS.

ARCADIA - Most of us know gourds - pumpkins, squash, melons - on our dinner plates.

But a devoted following of artists is more interested in creating art and music from the mostly inedible varieties.

Several hundred ``gourd-heads,'' as some of them like to call themselves, turned out Saturday at the Arboretum of Los Angeles County for its first Gourd Fair L.A.

Sponsored by the California Gourd Society, the event continues today, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Arboretum, 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia.

For participants, hard-shelled gourds offer the perfect canvases on which to etch designs or the perfect shape to fashion musical instruments.

``It's just infinite what you can do with them,'' said Burbank resident Carolyn Potter as she put finishing touches on a gourd vase decorated with rice paper.

Potter taught for 20 years at Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena and fell in love with the craft when she and others visited a gourd farm about 10 years ago.

They went to a barn with deep piles of gourds on either side and started using a rake to pull them down.

``We were all hooked. The car was full of gourds,'' Potter said. ``We thought we should have left a few people home so we could fill the rest of the car.''

The smaller bulb-shaped gourds are often used for jewelry. Some make rain sticks out of the snake-shaped varieties, and some of the fatter gourds make great drums.

It takes a year to grow the gourds and let them dry out on the vine, said Doug Welburn, president of the Welburn Gourd Farm. His Fallbrook farm produces more than 300,000 hard-shell gourds a year.

He plants in March and harvests the following year, when the gourds have lost all their water and weigh only a few ounces or more.

Actually, they could get close to 200 pounds, Welburn said, but ``they take a lot of pampering.''

Arboretum admission for adults is $5; for seniors and students, $3; for children 5 to 12, $1; under 5, free. For more information, call [phone].

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Artist and California Gourd Society member Alex Villalra works on a gourd Saturday at his booth in Gourd Fair L.A., an event in Arcadia this weekend at The Arboretum of Los Angeles County.

Mike Mullen/Staff Photographer