Click here for information about Eric Hopkin's August 2008 exhibition at the Daniel Kany Gallery:
Eric Hopkins is known in Maine both as a painter and as a glass artist. Hopkins, who began teaching glassblowing in 1974, has been making painted drawings for his works in glass for many years. The exhibition "Glass Drawings" will feature 8 of these full scale works works on paper.
With his focus on the natural world and landscape coupled with the natural form of blown glass, Hopkins' works in glass and glass drawings are inclined to present themselves as globes (sometimes studies that play on the distortion of Hopkins' camera lens). At times, Hopkins even draws with molten glass by pulling it over thick sheets of paper and letting the glass burn incise dark marks which he uses to divide his images into ocean, beach and sky. "Glass Drawings," however, is focused on the paintings that Hopkins does when developing his glass sculptures, a body of work which truly pulls his diverse worlds together. Six of the 8 works in the show have been already realized as glass sculptures.
"One of Maine's most imporant art writers recently told me that his favorite local artist is Eric Hopkins," remarked Daniel Kany: "He was clearly impressed not only with Hopkins' work but with his ability to combine a genuine Maine personality and work ethic with a 'star-quality' all too rare even in the art world. When I told him that Hopkins had begun his professional art career as a glassblower, he was stunned."
Eric Hopkins did not begin at the periphery of the world of glass art. From 1974 to 1980, Hopkins assisted Dale Chihuly at both RISD - where Chihuly was Chair of the Glass Department - and at Pilchuck Glass School, now widely heralded as the most important and historied glass institution in the world. In 1974, however, Pilchuck was still the fledgling brainchild of Chihuly - which was heavily inspired by Maine's Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, which Hopkins had attended for the first time in 1970. Haystack still plays an important role for Hopkins, who was teaching painting and drawing there until August 1st - the opening day of "Glass Drawings" at Daniel Kany Gallery.
Eric Hopkins is a native of North Haven Island, Maine, where he worked until 2006 when he took a studio and gallery space at 21 Winter Street in Rockland, Maine.
Hopkins has exhibited widely for many years. His paintings and glass are held in many private and public collections, including the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Corning Museum of Glass to name just a few.
Hopkins is showing courtesy of the Eric Hopkins Gallery in Rockland.
