The Abacus pieces, 2021-present, are a re-entry into art making after spending the previous ten years making furniture. It took that time to develop confidence in the woodworking techniques, both new skills and well practiced ones, that I could apply directly to my art making process. Along with finding objects that lent themselves to those skills in their construction. The abacus became both a structural and metaphoric guide to making.
A typical abacus, an early manual calculator that has survived into our present time, has a frame that holds a number of parallel rods on which slide the counting beads used in making calculations. Each rod has a place value- ones, tens, hundreds, etc. Unlike the common abacus, in my counting frames, a frame can be open or closed; reduced to just a base; or a constrained container. I am interested in both subverting and reflecting the functional elements of an abacus in my work. Because an abacus has structural hierarchies in order to function mathematically, this structure offers me an opportunity to play on cultural and societal norms and establishments- especially in regards to skin color; privilege; and the concentration of wealth and power in the twenty first century.
Rods can be parts in a larger matrix or stand as statements by themselves. Rods are shaped from long pieces of split or rived wood, hand shaved on a shaving horse. If there is a bend or curve in that section of log, then there is a bend in that rod. The beads act as beings or personas to be dressed up or downin line with or in resistance to societal hierarchies with the ability to create their own subcultures. Each turned wood bead brings its own coloration and pattern: that can be painted over, clothed, cloaked or armored, smoothed or left rough, oiled or waxed, or left bare. The diversity of trees in their inherent/unique structural growth and colors {including disease and deformity} mirrors the human body in the nature of each wooden bead for me. In this sense, choosing wood to turn becomes a process of discovering character; and the assembled beads together-a larger story.
Evangelos Courpas (b. 1960) grew up in Baltimore, Maryland in a diverse and artistic community in downtown Baltimore. One of his most important early influences was an apprenticeship with a woodworker in his neighborhood, John Alexander. In his teenage years, Courpas learned how to make greenwood chairs and other woodworking skills, as he assisted Alexander in his workshop. This attention to craft met with artistic vision when Courpas attended Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, studying photography and sculpture. After receiving his BA degree at Oberlin, Courpas moved to Brooklyn where he opened his own furniture business completing several commissioned projects for people in the New York City area. As time passed, Courpas’ urge to be more creative motivated him to apply to graduate school. Courpas attended New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and received an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts in 2004, merging his background in craft, photography and sculpture to create printed digital architectural and sculptural spaces, and screen installation video projections. After briefly teaching art in higher education in upstate New York, Courpas moved with his partner and son, to upstate South Carolina, where the lure of working with wood returned. Using wood from neighbors’ fallen trees, Courpas began designing and building furniture and sculpture. His work has been exhibited at ArtFields in Lake City, SC; Materials: Hard + Soft in Denton, TX. Courpas is currently multi-tasking between working in his studio, tending to his vegetable garden and walking his beloved corgi in the Experimental Forest near where he lives in Central, South Carolina.
