Carl Lopes art at the Sandwich Glass Museum. Video.
Artist Carl Lopes work on display at the Sandwich Glass Museum in an exhibit with glass artist Robert Dane entitled “Heartbeats and Harmony.”
During the 35 years that Carl Lopes was a Barnstable High School art teacher and department head, he was also a working artist ― harvesting ideas from each part of his life to feed the other.
“Being an art teacher made me a better artist and being an artist made me a better teacher,” said Lopes, 72, who retired from teaching in 2014 but says he is still learning every day.
It’s a trait Lopes shares with glass sculptor Robert Dane, who started taking drum kit lessons a few years ago at age 70 after a teenaged neighbor suggested he might be good at it.
In their first collaboration ― not only with each other, but ever ― Lopes and Dane created a gallery show called “Heartbeats & Harmony.”
The African-inspired exhibition of vibrant colors, textures and three-dimensional glass shapes is on display through Nov. 5 at the Sandwich Glass Museum, 129 Main St.
Carl Lopes’ five-decade retrospective of work
And on Oct. 19, a retrospective of Lopes’ work opened in the main gallery at Cotuit Center for the Arts. The brightly colored shields and masks that mark his later work are at the very end of a 50-year career that saw Lopes create about 225 pieces. Just over three dozen of those are in the Cotuit center’s gallery. (About half ― 105 ― of those have sold, Lopes said.)
“It begins with his earliest work in 1982 and loops around to his most recent work. It’s kind of fun to see the evolution,” said Michelle Law, exhibition specialist at Cotuit Center for the Arts.
Describing Lopes’ earlier works, Law said, “They’re very technical, very accurate. You see the same amount of precision, but it’s a lot more layered now … You can definitely see how he had little ‘aha’ moments along the way.”
Lopes said the mixed media acrylic paintings he is doing now are created on plywood using shapes he cuts with a jigsaw tool and found objects, like holographic gift bags and bits of broken jewelry.
“I can’t do this work on canvas because it would puncture the canvas,” Lopes said.
A door to design
Pointing to a couple of pieces, he explained, “These are on hollow core doors, which are perfect. They are light, big, easy to hang and designed not to warp.”
For “Heartbeats & Harmony,” Lopes found himself working on hollow glass heads. After Dane created the form, Lopes would use a rubber masking material to sketch and cut out the features, then use short spurts with a sand blaster to reach the desired layer of glass.
“Bob (Dane) convinced me that not everything has to be shiny,” said Lopes, whose own work features high-wattage, holographic shine. “Glass artists like to see some areas left roughed up.”
Dane’s forms incorporate years of study and practice, producing layers of color within a single glass form. Murrine glass techniques (yes, from the Italian glass-making city of Murano) then encase the colors in clear glass.
“It produces these crazy, sometimes unpredictable color patterns,” Dane said in a telephone interview from his studio in Heath, in northwest Massachusetts.
The first collaborative piece, named “All That We Perceive,” (priced at $10,000) features a dozen colors, sparkling in its case and also adorning the cover of the show’s catalog.
Sharing a love of African art, music, culture
While the artists worked in different media, Lopes and Dane shared a love of African music and culture. An African drumming playlist sounds softly in the background as visitors make their way through, viewing the work of Lopes and Dane, as well as six pieces they created together.
“People tell me they could dance their way through the exhibit, and that’s exactly what we were going for,” Lopes said.
Lopes’ African connection comes through his family: His maternal great-grandfather, John de Carmo, was lured aboard and kidnapped by the crew of a whaling ship that stopped on the Cape Verdean island of Brava, off the coast of West Africa.
“It was called blackbirding in the 1890s and was done to keep the ships’ crews full, to replace crew members who died or ran away. New Bedford was a big whaling port and my great-grandfather jumped ship there,” said Lopes, pointing to the story displayed as part of “Heartbeats & Harmony.”
The story is there also in Lopes’ art, like the 80-inch, nearly seven-foot-long “Conflict” ($12,000) in which the lush majesty of the artist’s African roots is jumbled and shadowed on the colorful canvas. “It’s my favorite,” he said.
Lopes, who regularly visits the Zion Union Heritage Museum in Hyannis, said he sells $30 prints of his work there for people who want a souvenir of their Cape Cod visit.
Where to see Carl Lopes current shows
“Heartbeats & Harmony,” with Lopes and Dane’s work, continues at the Sandwich Glass Museum through Nov. 2. Admission is $14 to the museum, open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Carl Lopes Retrospective, through Nov. 16, at Cotuit Center for the Arts, 4404 Route 28. Complementary juried show, “Shimmer,” is in the upstairs gallery. Galleries are free; hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
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