
On Friday Night, Jose Altuve, George Springer, and Justin Verlander all celebrated the art of their 2017 achievements with gifts from the wonderful sporting artist, Opie Otterstad.
The snapshot above does little justice to the rich tones, life energy, and incredible art passion that comes with each piece ever done by the famous Texas-based sports artist, Opie Otterstad, but we must invite you to see that for yourself from the many other items on display at his website as publicly available originals and prints. Opie Otterstad also does privately commissioned work too, and he explains the process that’s open to explore that possibility with interested parties at his site.
By the way, I am not a secret salesman. I’m just one of Opie Otterstad’s biggest fans. And I have been ever since he individually painted all of our inductees into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame during my tenure as their Board President and Executive Director in the early years of the 21st century. Opie Otterstad was the man who brought art, passion, and character to the individual works we gave to each inductee on our list – and his artful outcomes in each instance came out wearing the souls of the men they each depicted.
The pieces Opie did of Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio as joint TBHOF inductee members of our 2004 class speak loudly for everything this fine artist and generous fan of the game contributes. They were “The Killer Bees” down to the bone – right down to the fact that Opie used some kind of genuine bees wax as the fundamental substance in each of their works.
You will find these two iconic Astros and those depictions shown here today.
I will say this much. Copies of the Bagwell and Biggio pieces shown here may still be available through the Opie Otterstad site as prints. He’s also done other things of both men and quite a bit, we see, from the 2017 World Series Glory Hour that followed the Astros triumph in Game Seven.
Here’s the link. And have fun:
http://www.opieart.com/main.html
Have a great weekend, everybody!
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Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle