Kopkes Donate Shafer Watercolors to Gallery

     Warren and Dorothy Kopke, center, present two Gus Shafer paintings to Barton County Community College’s Shafer Gallery, represented by Darnell Holopirek, left, executive director of institutional advancement at the college, and Justin Engleman, right, Shafer Gallery assistant.
     The watercolor paintings, titled “Water Hole” and “Utah Wild Horses,” are gifts from the Warren H. and Dorothy M. Kopke Endowment for the Arts.
      The Kopkes were longtime friends of Gus Shafer and his wife, Eva, and they helped bring Shafer’s bronzes to Great Bend. The Kopkes later were instrumental in helping to establish the gallery named in memory of Gus Shafer. The Kopkes donated these latest paintings because they wanted to add more of Shafer’s works to the Shafer collection. They have continued to support the gallery over the years and want to make sure that Great Bend and Barton County have a number of examples of Shafer’s works, Engleman said.