Tarrytown
We were thrilled by the submissions we received this year, and are delighted to present the work of some of the Hudson Valley’s most talented artists right here in Tarrytown—up and down Main Street, along Broadway, and proudly displayed just outside the Tarrytown train station at Village Hall and Sarah Michael’s Park.
Scroll down for images and locations of the pumpkins, meet the artists, and learn about their PumpkinSpiration™.
Nicole Anne
Title: Thinning of the Veil Magic
Pumpkin Location:
Dahlia’s Song
25 North Broadway
Meet the Artist
Nicole is a local Tarrytown artist who draws inspiration from her time studying herbalism, her garden, her work addressing the climate crisis, motherhood, and from building community with Southern Italian American green witches, “Majara,” of the Hudson Valley.
PumpkinSpiration
This piece honors the cycles of life, death, and being in relationship with our ancestors and future ancestors. Serpentessa, a guardian of the underworld, represents shedding of the skins, for birthing and rebirthing. The rose signifies the ability to hold joy, love, and grief at the same time, a reminder for us to remember and honor those who came before us. Rosemary brings us remembrance of the past and clarity for the future. Artemisia supports visioning and dreaming. Hawthorne berries, a potent ally for ancestral work, are liminal guardians, marking the threshold between this world and other worlds. And always, always, my sister the moon, whose cyclical song allows us the opportunity to be transformed each month.
William Brockmeyer
Title
Off With Your Head!
Pumpkin Location
Transom Bookshop
23 Main Street
About the Artist
Will has lived in Tarrytown for ten years and is active in the community, bringing the area's legends to life building Tarrytown Halloween Parade floats with the Wildey St. team. A painter by passion, he works professionally as a creative director in event marketing. He and his wife and two children love exploring the culture and activities of Tarrytown and the lower Hudson Valley.
PumpkInspiration
There’s that famous scene in Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, when the Headless Horseman throws his flaming pumpkin directly at the camera—I always found that to be a terrifying perspective of the horror of being one of the Horseman’s victims. This pumpkin is a trompe l'oeil recreating that point of view.
Susie Brubaker
Title
Red, White and Blue and the Many Colors of Our Country
Pumpkin Location
The Old Westchester Savings Bank
2 South Broadway
About the Artist
Susie Brubaker is an Occupational Therapist with advanced degrees in the Neurophysiology of Movement and Kinematics from U Penn and Columibia U.. She began her mixed media art career in 2014 when she began studying mosaics at Wishflower Studio. The idea of taking broken pieces and making them into a whole object of art paralleled the healing process she practiced in rehabilitating her patients. During the pandemic, she studied acrylic painting techniques.. -increasingly fascinated by trees and the space between the leaves. She is involved in community based art activities, the TASH Art Crawl, Shames JCC, YAI workshops and participates in many Makers Markets.
PumpkinSpiration
250 years. Happy Birthday to this very young country of ours! Freedom is a very wonderful and very difficult concept to hold and maintain in a country built by everyone who came from somewhere else. We continue to wrestle with and celebrate that privilege with all the rough edges that come with it and all the opportunities that are present for us! Liberty for all! Touch the textures and colors of liberty and justice for all. In Tarrytown, we also celebrate the richness of our diversity in nature with the colors of our River, the rainbow sunsets, and our eagles who soar above us in grace and power..the symbol of our nation, right here on our River.
Lynda Fassa
Title
Faerie Folk of the Hollow
Pumpkin Location
Village Hall
1 Depot Plaza
Meet the Artist
Lynda Fassa is a published author, self-taught fine arts painter, and longtime resident of Tarrytown. She lives with her husband Hossein and brought up her children, Layla, Mina and Nadia here…they have since taken the spirit of Sleepy Hollow far and wide. When she is not painting or writing she is helping other people find a slice of the Hollow at Corcoran Legends on Main Street where she is a licensed Real Estate Salesperson and a Certified Home Stager. Her first work of fiction is Haunted Sleepy Hollow and is available at Transom Books and Cozy Coven. She wanted to thank Sasha and Saint, her giant dogs, for tolerating her artist messes.
PumpkinSpiration
There are things in this place that are seen, and there are things that are unseen. But the unseen is as real and as powerful as the wind, (and we cannot see that either.) In this hollow we are never truly alone. I made this little diorama to try to catch what moves too quickly, and too quietly for our eyes to perceive, but which our hearts already know is there.
Elizabeth Naughton
Title: Spooky Sweet Halloween
Pumpkin Location
The Swan’s House & Bella’s Boutique
37 North Broadway
Meet the Artist
Elizabeth Naughton is a designer and artist who creates colorful, expressive work that brings a little joy to everyday life. She began her career in graphic design and went on to work in UX and product design. Today, she is making more room in her life for art and creative exploration, including painting, mixed media, and experimenting with new technologies such as augmented reality. Inspired by nature, flowers, pattern, and the beauty of everyday moments, Elizabeth finds endless inspiration in the Hudson River Valley and the world around her.
PumpkinSpiration
Spooky Sweet Halloween was created to brighten people’s day and bring a smile to people as they walk through town and experience the Rivertowns Pumpkin Trail. My goal was to create something colorful and eye-catching that would be fun to discover during the day, with a little surprise after dark. The friendly ghosts are based on an augmented reality project I created several years ago, bringing a favorite idea back to life in a new form. Sculpting the ghosts with foam clay gives them a playful three-dimensional quality, while glow-in-the-dark paint adds a little extra fun when the sun goes down.
Tatyana Polyak
Title: Scream
Pumpkin Location:
The Purple Ostrich / Tarrytown Floral Designs
7 South Broadway
Meet the Artist
Tatyana Polyak, originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, is a Northern Westchester-based artist whose creative practice follows the concept “ART=LIFE.” Working primarily in oil on canvas, she depicts the world around her—from everyday objects and natural forms to landscapes inspired by travel and distant places. Her process begins with a simple sketch and develops through layered color, while experimentation with surfaces and materials allows her to accentuate and complement each subject.
Nature, with its distinctive textures, stillness, shadows, and mysteries, is a central source of inspiration. She is also drawn to traditional Judaica objects in conversation with passing time and light. Travel, particularly through the remote Italian countryside, has inspired a series of oil paintings exploring the fragile beauty of centuries-old landscapes and towns shaped by natural color, light, architecture, and the pressures of modernity.
You can find more of her artwork @aart_by_t.
PumpkinSpiration
My inspiration for decorating a large plaster pumpkin for the Pumpkin Trail, was Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream. I chose this iconic image because it is widely recognized as a powerful expression of fear, anxiety, and surprise. Halloween is a time when ghosts, goblins, and other spooky creatures appear to startle and frighten us, making The Scream a natural fit for the occasion. By recreating this well-known artwork on a pumpkin sculpture, I wanted to combine the worlds of fine art and Halloween in a fun and imaginative way. My hope is that the familiar, expressive face will capture the spirit of the season, bring a smile to visitors, and perhaps even give a few people a playful scare as they enjoy the Pumpkin Trail.
Melanie Rosenblatt
Title: Ripple Effect
Pumpkin Location
Transom Bookshop
23 Main Street
Meet the Artist
Melanie Rosenblatt is a local artist who daylights as a public relations professional and fills her free time with painting, drawing, and photography. After studying Art at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, Melanie pursued a career in public relations, while keeping her fine art skills sharp by freelancing in graphic design and photography, and making commissioned art pieces for family and friends. You can find more of her photography work at @melanierosenblattphoto
PumpkinSpiration
Over the past few years, Melanie has developed a series of lined colored pencil drawings, varying in scale and palette, but all beginning with one or more straight lines. With each adjacent line, the pattern devolves in smoothness until swooping waves emerge. Emblematic of the butterfly effect, the patterns visually demonstrate how small, almost imperceptible changes can lead to unpredictable outcomes.
Kristina Schmidt
Title: It’s Lit!
Pumpkin Location
Hudson River Eye Care
4 North Broadway
Meet the Artist
Kristina is a visual artist living in Irvington, NY. She is the Chair of the Irvington Arts & Culture Committee, she founded o the Irvington Bulldog Gallery in 2022—and now run the Rivertowns Pumpkin Trail!
Daniel Schwachter
Title
“the light pours itself through a small hole in the sky”
Pumpkin Location
Sarah Michael’s Park
1 River Plaza
Meet the Artist
Dan is a Tarrytown local who, by his own admission, hates writing about himself. So we are happy to step in and say that Dan’s a totally rad guy whose artistic style is inspired by vintage comic books, pulp, and street art. We placed his Lighthouse pumpkin in Sarah Michael’s Park to serve as a beacon—a sign of welcome and safety—for the tens of thousands of residents and visitors arriving at the Tarrytown train station this fall.
PumpkinSpiration
The stacked pumpkin design looked like a tower, and made me think of the Tarrytown Lighthouse. And then the bridge and the palisades would be there. And day and night. But it was more about light and how it’s everywhere. The title I stole from a Richard Brautigan poem I love about stars. Oh and my cat is on top. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense. But his name is Deacon, and a lighthouse is a beacon. So, you know.
Isabel Slingerland
Title: The Remnants
Pumpkin Location
Grape Expectations
92 North Broadway
Meet the Artist
Isabel is a Tarrytown local who has been developing her artistic side over the past few years. Originally from Ossining, she took a course at Cedar Lane Arts and later became a pottery studio member, where she developed her own style. She is always looking to expand her knowledge and recently added welding, woodworking, and glassblowing to her repertoire. Outside of her artistic passions, she works in public health research at Mount Sinai and volunteers with individuals impacted by the justice system. In her free time, Isabel can be found lounging with her black cat Marcus and Bengal Shiloh, attending concerts, making pizzas, and planning her next travel excursion. Follow her at @isipotteri.
PumpkinSpiration
After spending months frequenting a cat cafe in Atlanta, GA, Isabel bonded with the resident fat black cat, Marcus. She was thankfully able to adopt him and bring him home to NY, where the two have been inseparable ever since. This pumpkin features recurring motifs of his rotund face and of all the fish he consumed. The design draws inspiration from painting techniques used for Russian dolls and Dutch Delft pottery. As someone with both Dutch and Russian heritage, this piece pays homage to those artistic forms.
A Special Thanks…
The Tarrytown tributary of this year’s Rivertown Pumpkin Trail was funded and made possible by the Village of Tarrytown. We are grateful for the support of Mayor Karen Brown, Village Administrator Rich Slingerland, our Village Trustees, and the hard-working crew from the Department of Public Works.
And immense gratitude goes to participating local businesses: Grape Expectations, The Swan’s House, Bella’s Boutique, Dahlia’s Song, Hudson River Eye Care, The Purple Ostrich, Bark & Meow, Tarrytown Floral Designs, ShayLula, and Transom Bookshop.