Avant Guardians

By Leticia Gonzales

Grandfatherly inspiration

Garrett Kopka discovers new ways of creating art

Garrett Kopka took advantage of the extra extra downtime from the pandemic lockdown of 2020 2020 by teaching himself some new art skills.

“COVID happened and everyone seemed to have a lot lot of time on their hands, so I pretty much started creating creating and messing around with it every day,” he said.

Kopka, who is 25, grew up around Mankato, Kasota Kasota and St. Peter. He credits his artistic grandfathers grandfathers for providing nurturing for the arts. His paternal paternal grandfather was an oil painter, while his maternal maternal grandfather was a woodworker who used knives to to design sculptures and trinkets.

“I started drawing and excelling in art class when when I I was younger and that just followed through into high high school.”

From there, he started to create more complicated complicated art pieces but never pursued any professional training. training. It wasn’t until the pandemic that he began to take art art more seriously and started exploring paint-pouring paint-pouring liquid art manipulations. He found a company that sold sold a fluorescent line that was reactive to black light, and and his work began to accelerate.

“I didn’t have anyone to ask, so I did a lot of of workshop stuff on YouTube to get ideas.”

He researched how to create various methods using using stretched canvas ranging in size from 3 feet by 3 feet and and 4 feet by 4 feet until he gained the confidence to move up to larger creations such as 8 feet by 8 feet and 8 feet by 10 feet. Kopka said he experimented by painting rocks and utilizing different color palettes.

“I didn’t have much of an idea of what I was doing really.”

One of those experimentations involved using a hairdryer to blow the paint out across the canvas. Another method features the use of toothpicks to draw through the paint in place of straws. He really focused on what colors would look good together and found ways to enhance the result through mixing and manipulating.

Kopka also utilizes glow-in-the-dark paint in his stretched canvas creations.

“It really adds an added bonus to it at the end of the night if you pay attention to it, charge it up a little bit.”

Despite the progression, Kopka said he didn’t get serious about his work until he was able to secure his own place and set up his own studio workspace where he was finally “allowed to make a mess.”

“I had my own studio to create from the ground up, which allowed me to further my own growth.”

The space allowed him to spend extra time on his creations. Last August, he held his first show at the Makerspace in Mankato. Prior to that, he mostly sold to family and friends or showed his work primarily on Instagram.

From there, he began participating in more shows such as the Day of the Dead festival in Mankato and the Makers Fair in St. Peter, until it became second nature. He also spends time selling at the HUB markets in Mankato and had the chance to showcase his art at the Festival Solstice in Mankato.

“My hope is to get into more music festivals. I feel like this sort of art would fall in line pretty well with that genre.”