Eric Hopkins
“Well, when I was about three, four years old, I had a couple brothers, one a couple years older, one a couple years younger, and my father had a party fishing boat. He just bought his his great granddaddy’s property on the waterfront of North Haven and he had a party fishing boat. And so he was taking people out and he'd take one of the boys each time. And the other guys weren't as excited about going this boat as I would. So I swap my time with the old man doing something different so I get to go every day. And I had my bright orange life jacket and all these people with colors and clothes and slickers and everything and I thought this was great. And he kept me in a bait barrel just to keep keep me contained. Like he was working, you know, he couldn't, he didn't know what this kid was doing. And so finally I graduated to the fishing line and I, I it was a beautiful blue sky day, much like today started out, flat calm, looking into the water, this turquoise, blue green water. And these people are catching these brightly colored fish and flipping and flopping around to get out of the water and in the sun, and all iridescence and purpley, yellow spots. And I caught my first fish. And it was like, Wow! This is exciting! And there it was just in the light sparkling away and flopping away and then it died. And I'm like, “Oh, this is cool! And I'm gonna show my mother!” I'm all puffed up proud and this is like, great! So I took it home near the edge of dark and my mother saw this old gray, dead fish - she'd seen a lot of them. Wasn't quite as enthusiastic as I was. But, I took my poster paints, my parents had paper and paint and colors around, which was handy, and I painted directly on the fish with my poster paints and bright colors and trying to bring that experience back to life. And I think I realized at that very time, I didn't realize it, but it was true color. Man, color is life. Light is life. And when you're dead, you don't see color. Only black and white stuff. That was a real, real eye opener. And from that, couple days later, my mother said, "Son, your art stinks, I'm gonna throw that away.” So I'm like, had this great, emotional, expressive feeling like catching the fish and then ehhh not so exciting, and then excited, and then gotta throw it away. Not so excited. Then I took my paper and I painted fish. The idea of fish with color on paper. And it symbolically is all about the creative process.....taking it from one experience, one extreme, to the other. And an emotional component of it and.....there it is. That's what art is, elevating. It's a language, having an experience, creating from it, learning from it, and expressing from it,” said Eric Hopkins, well known artist who is from and still resides on North Haven.
Eric shares his passion for the state he grew up in and the country he lives in as he travels around the nation learning and experiencing new places. You can certainly see this passion through his artwork. When he was younger he remembers getting off the island for a trip across the nation with his father and brother. They traveled through Canada and then up and down the west coast. He almost smuggled in fireworks from Canada into the USA but I think he learned his lesson as he couldn’t lie to the border patrol officer.
Photographed by Justin Smulski
Kristan Vermeulen interviewing Eric Hopkins in his studio on North Haven.
Not only does the environment he can see, feel and breathe in day-to-day inspire him, but the one thing that truly lifted his creative mind was the space program and his memories of the past, present and future.
“And just looking at the sky and looking at those engineers and orbits and get that shoot off from Cape Canaveral and go around the earth and vector off to the moon and then get to the moon and catch moon gravity. And, that was a big, big deal. And again, there were losses. You know, that, I can't remember the dog and the chimps names, that died. Pretty in danger, but they're in the sky. This is this is a challenge and so that kind of fits into the equation quite a bit. And so I wanted to do something with that idea, it's a concept idea. This was early, late 60s, early 70s, the concept of God was dead, painting was dead. So I'm, you know, this kind of space age conceptual stuff. And so I gone to Haystack as a nightwatchman in Deer Isle was, it was a glass Erwin Eisch, a glass maestro from Germany was there. So I started playing with hot glass at night - it was really great. And I see these squiggles on the floor, molten glass squiggles, in the dust and I'd seen the same forms repeated in the rocks, in the granite rocks. And, "Oh, yeah!" put those together and then I got to Rhode Island School of Design, and with Chihuly and started flinging hot glass in space, and forming burning stuff. So I call them pyro grass fire drawings, and they make these great marks. And there's some of the house I didn't I don't think I showed you. So that was a big thing. Then I came back here to to the island. And like, yeah....this is kind of far out, wacky stuff, burning up stuff, thinking of space on a flat surface. And in the meantime, I've done a lot of different schools. I studied at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass with a guy, Paul Scott, who would study with Hans Hofman. It was all about plasticity and space and the flat, two dimensional painting surface. So again, that was pretty heady stuff, right from, directly from, abstract expressionism into kind of gesture live moving..... movement, it's all about movement. Which is something else going, back to my brother and you know, brought his body up and he wasn't moving. He's a dead guy. And.....and I don't think nowadays death is whisked away from us, but here, there he was and he was not moving and, and I said.....unconsciously to myself, “I gotta keep moving because as long as I'm moving, I'm alive. And live is good.” But I connected with my brother and I was five years older. We shared a bedroom and he had, what do you call it......color problems at birth, and some some damage brain, brain damage stuff. So we, we communicated, he didn't really speak like "ABCD" stuff but we communicated and, and I just, you know, we were good buds. So we, we had this communication without actual verbal stuff and then he died. And he's always been.....we've always been communicating,” said Eric.
Photographed by Justin Smulski
Eric showing Justin Smulski, Amy Bouchard and I one of his many sketches.
I was headed to Seattle and went to the Corning Museum to get more inspiration. I used to do some blown glass shell forms and fish and used to be in the Corning Museum collection until they had a flood and lost it. So, they had two floods actually, and so it was really great to see some of my old cronies' work there and wanted to go to cross to Niagara Falls. You know, I had all this glass powder and toolboxes and colored powders of stilt white, basically. So I was advised not to take the Canada route with toolboxes upon toolboxes is full of white powders. Yeah, I think, I think it was, I think I was doing good with the fireworks. So, in..... in Corning, I looked at the weather map and we're headed through Teddy Roosevelt National Park and North Dakota, never been to North Dakota, and then Glacier - that was the plan. And looked at the weather, it was like red, a lot of red ovals. Five feet of snow were predicted in the Rockies. Central Plains, like tornadoes, thunderstorms, flash floods, everything. So we made a decision to go skirt that, maybe we should go a little south. So we went to Erie, Pennsylvania, and then looked at more, there was more of it happening, just kept going south and west to get to St. Louis and then, and then just kept going south and west till we hit a big hole in the ground in Arizona. The Grand Canyon and the South Rim and, never been there, seen all those pictures. And then to the North Rim is pretty, pretty amazing. And I was an artist in residence at Acadia National Park in 2000 so that was a big process of, you know, where I started developing pictures, paintings, from photographs. And so I did that all the way across country, some on the road paintings, photos, some off road photos, and Grand Canyon, north and south, then Zion. And it was just great. Wyoming meteor crater and then finally got into the Cascades and back to Seattle and north of Seattle. So that's a big..... I'm a traveling man. We got our kicks on Route 66. And in America, you know, it's the land the free home of the brave and, man, some stupid too. And but it's really, you know, I love this planet, first of all, but I love the country. And when a lot of my friends were traveling Europe and everywhere. I just..... god, there's so much I want to see right now, right here. And Madawaska and Cobscook Bay and so it's, it's really, I like to see different places. I was flying a lot around the coast, then I got three little kids that kind of, you know....it changes the, changes the equation a little around the edges. And just try to make make a living year-round on a 60 day island is kinda tough. So I also, once I got my recreational license, I realized that I'm not a safe pilot if I'm photographing. I've got to, I've got to be, be aware of, of taking pictures, or I've got to be aware of flying the plane. So basically, I chose to go with picture taking. And I have a friend flight instructor in Belfast, and we kind of hit it off and did some fun, fun flights and then we'd be, I'd be, flying to get my time in and say, "Okay, Sandy, it's your plane." My plane. My camera. So, so we do that, that that trade off and that was really good, really helpful. And again, seeing what is so isolated.....that island, that island, that island, they're connected! Madawaska is connected to Edmiston! We can almost walk there but we didn't because I heard there are a lot of sensors and drones.....I was advised not to do that. Is there a pattern here? Oh, Canada. But anyway, there's that aspect of it. And so I spent some time in '74, drove across country. I went to Rhode Island School of Design with Dale Chihuly, the glass Maestro, and to Pilchuck Glass School the third year it was in existence. Next year is the 55th anniversary. So I wanted to get more into glass and get back into what I really liked doing and so that kinda started.....I've been working on that since '74, back and forth, and then this time I was about to get going on it. And then the old COVID hit. And that was just it.” said Eric.
Photographed by Justin Smulski
Eric walking barefoot to his studio located near the water.
Photographed by Justin Smulski
One of Eric’s watercolor paintings displayed in his studio near the water.
Eric’s work revolves around the American Dream and he continues to create that big picture through his artwork. Even though challenges arose in 2020 which have slowed down his travel plans, he continues to travel safely across Maine to capture the beautiful landscape and celebrate his home state’s Bicentennial. But he’s always about getting bigger and in order to do that you have to expand your creativity.
Photographed by Justin Smulski
One of Eric’s paintings of the Maine coast.
“I got a little conversation with Teddy Roosevelt, wherever it comes from he says, you know, you, you not meaning me personally, but you humans have to think bigger yet to think this is this is the island earth. And, you know, the National Parks.....great idea. Really great American idea. He says, but you have to think bigger. You need to think of a solar system park. And the earth island is the real keeper of this, of the, of the, of the National Park Solar System version. And, you know, look at it, this life! This is pretty amazing. And what's amazing about National Parks is we're preserving areas. So we got to preserve, not just Acadia or South Dakota, this little planet! This little island Earth, it's, it's, it's passionate. You know, I'm passionate about it. And, and I drive a big car across country sucking up the gas. So that's, you know, there are a lot of balances. You've got to, you know, sort of figure it all out. I, I live on an island and have to go with a ferry and it's like driving across country. And I just kept moving. And I got to Rockland and it was like the longest red light. I had to wait in the ferry parking lot for 20 hours before I could get on the ferry for the light went from red to green. And so that's part of the island stuff that has its challenges. And, and building out here. People say, "Oh, you know, three times as much!" And oh, no, no, no..... well, well, it's at least three times as much and it takes three times as long. You know, that was just one person 20 hours in the parking lot. But if you have a construction crew coming out...,” says Eric.