SEARSPORT — Meet Maine artist Eric Hopkins, and see Eric Hopkins: Shells - Fish - Shellfish, a major retrospective of his work, on Friday, July 25, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Penobscot Marine Museum’s Carver Memorial Library Gallery, 11 Church Street, Searsport.   Eric Hopkins: Shells - Fish – Shellfish is at Penobscot Marine Museum June 16 through Oct. 19.  Admission is free for this Artist’s Reception.   

Eric Hopkins grew up on the island of North Haven, and the sea and its creatures were a big part of his childhood.   “I could spend a lifetime intimately exploring any one animal form,” Hopkins says, and in Shells - Fish – Shellfish we see he has done just that.  This exhibit includes, for the first time, Hopkins’ personal collection of the skeletons, shells and remnants of creatures which have inspired a lifetime of art.  

Eric Hopkins: Shells - Fish – Shellfish includes artwork in a variety of media: paintings, monotypes and glass and wood sculpture, much of which has not been seen before.  Hopkins studied a variety of media at different art schools, but at Rhode Island School of Design he learned to blow glass with world-famous glass sculptor Dale Chihuly.  Many of Hopkins’ blown glass shells are in this exhibit. 

 The Penobscot Marine Museum is on Route One in Searsport, Maine and has seven new exhibits and over fifty programs and events during the 2014 season.  Its three acre, ten building campus is open through Oct. 19.  Museum hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday noon to 5 p.m.   Admission is free to members and Searsport residents.