HUNTINGTON – Last Monday, Steve Hamlin received an email from his Etsy site (etsy.com/shop/stevehamlin) asking if he would be able to send two prints to a CBS studio in Georgia by January 12. The prints were going to be used as set dressing for the new “MacGyver” show.
“Day’s End,” by Steve Hamlin, one of the prints sold to the “MacGyver show. (Submitted photo)
Hamlin contacted them immediately, and said he could do it if they completed the transaction and he could get to the post office by 4 p.m. That didn’t happen, but he was able to ship them out by Tuesday, and they were expected to arrive by Thursday as needed.
Hamlin said the prints were landscapes and fairly small, only 8.5X11 from the original 15×22 paintings that he said are ten years old. One was of the Berkshire Sugar House in Plainfield, and the other of Day’s End, an Audubon camp on the coast of Maine. He said he assumes the episode will have a New England flavor to it.
Hamlin specializes in watercolor, and his subject matter draws from nature, history, and architecture, three “life-long passions,” according to his website at stevehamlinart.com. “I have lived most of my life in New England, and I derive tremendous satisfaction from capturing images of my home region and from the travel that my wife, Linda and I enjoy doing together. In our daily lives, as well as our travels, Linda and I strive to capture the beauty and wonder that surrounds us, she as a photographer, and I through my paintings,” he writes.
Huntington artist Steve Hamlin at a Hilltown Artisans Guild show in 2015. (Photo by Amy Porter)
In recent years, he has earned several awards and accolades for his art. In 2015, he was named a signature artist for the New England Watercolor Society, and in 2016, for the Northeast Watercolor Society. In 2016, he was also made a signature member of the Society of Animal Artists.
In 2016, Hamlin won first place in a “Nature of Art” show at the Cumberland Cultural Center in Cumberland, Maryland for a drawing, something he has been doing more of recently. He also won two prizes, Best Depiction of Rural Life and the Memorial Award at the Green Mt. Watercolor Exhibition.
Just last week, Hamlin was named a master artist in the Bennington VT collective of the Bennington Center for the Arts. Hamlin is a founding member of the collective, and showed his work in its signature show, “Art of the Animal,” from 2010 to 2016. This year, the collective will be including landscapes in a new show called “Wildscapes.”
Upcoming shows include the Guild of Boston Arts on Newberry Street from January 31 to February 24.
Hamlin also teaches watercolor and drawing at the Springfield Museum, and will offer two classes of each in February and March.
“Berkshire Sugarhouse,” the other print by Huntington artist Steve Hamlin to watch for on the “MacGyver” tv series. (Submitted photo)
Selling his work to the MacGyver show was a first for Hamlin’s art career, but not for his other career. For the past 25 years, he has been designing, cutting and sewing clown shoes for Spear’s Specialty Shoes as an outside contractor. In that capacity, he has worked with productions before, having created 75 pairs of clown shoes for “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with Jim Carrey. He also designed and made quite a few pairs for “The Grinch” on Broadway, which he said was an unrelated production with different shoes. Last year, he also created a rush pair for an episode of “Modern Family.”
And, every year from September to December, he makes a steady diet – two pairs a week – of Santa boots.
Hamlin guesses, from his experience with Modern Family, that his prints will appear in an episode of “MacGyer” in February or March. But, he said, that was for a different network.
