A 678-pound pumpkin with a cascade of golden curls is turning heads in Dublin, Ohio this week, and most people who see it immediately know who it's supposed to be. Artist Jeanette Paras spent 25 hours carving and painting the giant gourd into a tribute to the late singer-songwriter Dolly Parton, right down to the hair, which took 21 separate wigs to recreate.
The massive pumpkin portrait was unveiled as Paras's latest entry in a decades-long tradition of turning oversized squash into celebrity likenesses, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Parton died on Aug. 25, 2026, and the Dublin resident said honoring her with this year's creation was a “no-brainer.”
“It's just obvious! She was loved by everybody, regardless of their stripes. If you have a problem with Dolly, that's a red flag,” Paras said, per the same account. The sentiment seems to have resonated widely: 95% of people who guessed which celebrity Paras would carve this year correctly named Parton before the big reveal.
A Career Built On Giant Celebrity Faces
Paras has a history of pumpkinizing a different famous face every year, and her portfolio reads like a pop-culture time capsule. She's previously turned pumpkins into Taylor Swift twice — a 399-pound version in 2023 and a 735-pound likeness in 2025 — and carved a “TrumpKin” resembling Donald Trump back in 2015, the Dispatch notes.
Her range goes well beyond music and politics. According to NBC4, Paras has also emulated Saturday Night Live's Bowen Yang and the late Betty White in pumpkin form, and in 2021 her Ted LassoKin tipped the scales at 705 pounds — at the time the largest piece displayed on her porch. In 2016, she even carved both presidential candidates that year, Trump and Hillary Clinton, into dueling pumpkins, as reported by Ohio Magazine.
Decades Of Practice In A Dublin Garage
Paras has been pumpkinizing celebrities in the studio of her Dublin home, which she calls her “garage-mahal,” for more than 35 years, according to her own artist biography on paraspumpkins.com. She has pumpkinized nearly 100 giant celebrity subjects since 1988, painting a new face onto a fresh pumpkin canvas essentially every fall since then.
Her process starts with a scaled sketch that she transfers onto the pumpkin's surface using washable marker before scouring and painting the surface, Ohio Magazine reports. NBC4 adds that each finished piece, from the research stage through the final brushstroke, typically takes roughly 25 to 30 hours of work — right in line with the 25 hours Paras put into this year's Parton tribute.
The size of Paras's pumpkins has varied considerably over the years depending on the subject and the growing season. Ohio Magazine reports her creations generally range from 200 to 500 pounds, while WGN Radio has cited a typical range of 200 to 400 pounds with some outliers reaching as large as 1,200 pounds. Either way, this year's 678-pound Parton pumpkin lands solidly on the larger end of her body of work.
