Long Island couples Bob and Bobbie Dalpiaz and Scott and Linda Hartman reinvent themselves as artists in retirement

What a difference retirement makes.

Four educators, all related by marriage and temperament, have now become the students, exploring their artistic creativity in ways they couldn’t when they were younger and busy with jobs and raising children. Now, the four — who said they often share tips and assist in one another’s endeavors — have garnered recognition for their work, exhibiting their crafts in galleries and selling them at fairs. They also set aside time to spend with their children and grandchildren.

“It’s a very happy rat race,” Bob Dalpiaz, 72, of Sayville, said with a chuckle.

Dalpiaz, who was the band director for Brentwood schools, was the first to retire, in 2006. His wife, Bobbie Dalpiaz, 69, who taught music and art in the Sayville schools until 2010, was next.

Scott and Linda Hartman, both 64, retired from the Brentwood schools in 2014. Linda (who is Bob Dalpiaz’s sister) had been an art teacher, while Scott started as an art teacher and was an assistant superintendent for secondary education, programs and policy when he left the district.

Since then, the four have reinvented themselves. Bob Dalpiaz is a woodworker who makes food bowls and vases. He also creates fanciful lids for his wife, who found her voice in pottery, experimenting with firing clay along with seaweed, banana peel, the sawdust from her husband’s wood projects and other materials to create unique designs.

Scott Hartman, meanwhile, is a self-taught watercolorist and table maker who likes to showcase the wood’s natural grain, while Linda is a painter and works in fiber art, often incorporating materials like found objects or yarn-wrapped tubes.

In the Hartmans’ Riverhead home, inspirational photos cover the walls above the couple’s work desks, from the timber studio of favorite artist Andrew Wyeth to some of the manhole covers Scott Hartman encountered in his world travels. Their basement, divided into his and hers spaces, houses piles of yarn, a wood workshop and half-finished tabletops made of orange-colored exotic wood.

Reflecting on their many projects, both ongoing and planned, Scott Hartman joked: “We’re going to have to live forever.”

For the Dalpiaz duo, every part of their Sayville property features their work: wood tables with “live” edges that preserve the tree’s natural borders, a homemade Murphy bed, colorful vases and Asian-inspired garden temples.

Beyond their homes, the artisans have had some success in the art world. One of Scott Hartman’s paintings of a manhole cover, Boston Sewer, was chosen to be part of the National Watercolor Society’s 2019 members’ exhibit. And Bobbie Dalpiaz has twice been named best potter at one of the East Coast’s largest art festivals, run by the nonprofit Gallery North in Setauket.

The retirees also sell their work through their businesses, EarthenWood Artisans, run by the Dalpiazes, and Hartman Studio 44, owned by the Hartmans. They said their works can sell for hundreds to up to thousands of dollars.

“If I look back now at my very first pieces, I might cringe, but at the time, I thought they were amazing,” Bobbie Dalpiaz said with a laugh. “In retirement, we’ve evolved even more because we’ve had more time to play, to explore.”

Still learning

Bob Dalpiaz started making wood furniture shortly after he and Bobbie married because they didn’t have much money for home furnishings. His first efforts were less than stellar: His coffee table fell apart and so did his kitchen cabinets, he said.

But now, Dalpiaz has graduated from making basic wood lids for his wife’s pottery to carving more-intricate lids as well as food bowls from burls — odd wood growths.

Retirement has also allowed the artists to pursue more formal education in their crafts.

This summer, Bobbie Dalpiaz began taking online chemistry classes to study glazes. She said she concocted her own glazes, just like when she was a girl crushing berries and other food to make her own paint. She learned how to salvage old glazes and experimented with chemicals to produce different finishes on clay, she said.

“It’s really been so beneficial,” Bobbie Dalpiaz said.

Shortly after they retired, Linda Hartman said, she gave her husband the gift of a residency program with the Thos. Moser Furniture Co. in Massachusetts.

“It was one of the most life-changing things I’ve ever done,” he said.

During the program, he said he made a hardwood lounge chair and footstool, which now grace their bedroom.

With the help of brother-in-law Dalpiaz during the COVID-19 pandemic, Scott Hartman said he set up an extensive woodshop at home. There, he has cut thin strips of wood and steams them until they are “wet noodles” to be shaped onto the contours of larger pieces for table tops, showcasing the variety of colors in the wood, he said.

In another boost to their skills, the Hartmans went to Canada four years ago for a three-day course taught by a noted painter and naturalist, Robert Bateman. They said the course helped them refine their approach — teaching them, for example, not to paint a blade of grass but to paint both the shape of the blade’s shadowed part and the sunlit part.

“My biggest lesson is that I haven’t mastered my craft no matter how hard I work at it,” Linda Hartman said. “It’s a constant learning curve, and it keeps you engaged and wanting to do more.”

Working together

Working with their spouses has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of retirement, both couples said.

A few weeks ago, Scott Hartman daubed sky blue and white paint onto a 4-by-6-foot canvas and his wife followed, softening his clouds with her brush.

The painting, they said, was a collaborative effort to portray an oyster pond the couple saw in Orient.

The two tend to think alike and favor the same colors, and they rarely argue, the Hartmans said.

Bobbie Dalpiaz, meanwhile, generally hands over her fired clay pieces to her husband so he can fashion wood lids or stems that will complement the work’s colors and style. If something doesn’t fit or his wife doesn’t like it, Bob Dalpiaz makes another one.

“The whole process of us working throughout the years has been really rewarding and . . . brought us closer together,” he said.

Difficulty letting go

Over the Labor Day weekend, the Hartmans set up a tent to sell their works at the Westhampton Beach Festival of the Arts.

The Dalpiazes also used to make the grueling round of fairs, but said now that their names are better known, they are content to place their works for sale in art galleries and save time for family.

The Hartmans still enjoy meeting art lovers at fairs, but it hasn’t been easy for either couple when they hear people say, “Oh, I could make that.” Bobbie Dalpiaz remembers crying once.

And it can be hard letting go of their work — pieces they have decorated with homemade glaze, struggled to perfect with the right shade of paint and protected with layers of polyurethane before letting them out in the
world.

“No, we can’t — we’re not ready yet,” Bobbie Dalpiaz recalled saying to her husband the first time they had to hand over their works for sale.

Over the years, the Dalpiazes said, it’s gotten harder to say goodbye as the lidded vases reflect the growing mastery in their crafts.

“I feel like I’ve invested a lot more of myself and my time into each and every piece,” Bobbie Dalpiaz said. “There’s a lot that can go wrong in pottery. A piece can break, crack, the glaze can go wrong. Then when something all comes together, it looks incredible to you. It’s like, ‘This is a gem.’ And then Bob adds his piece and it just becomes even more incredible.”

Reflecting on their recent collaborations, Linda Hartman said she has hesitated to sell them. To her, she said, it’s not just, say, an oyster pond — she sees her husband’s touches on the canvas and remembers the moments they struggled to get things right.

But it’s a salve for the painting partners, they said, when buyers say, “I have to put this in my home,” and when they garner repeat customers.

The artisans often ask buyers to send photos of the artwork in their new settings.

“It’s like it found its forever home,” Linda Hartman said. “And that’s more important to me, that somebody really wanted it in their home.”