Bio

Evangelos Courpas is an Artist and Woodworker living and working in Central, South Carolina. His early formative experiences, beginning at age 13, centered on working green wood to make post and rung chairs. This included felling trees like Oaks and Hickories; splitting the logs into quarter and eighth sections; then crosscutting and riving those sections into rough stock for posts rungs and slats. The finishing of these parts was done with a drawknife and spokeshave on a shaving horse.In conjunction with this work, Evangelos learned the joinery and necessary moisture content for each part in the assembly of the chair.

On this foundation, he added traditional joinery and casework skills, using seasoned lumber; building Shaker inspired beds, tables, and chests of drawers while working for other furniture makers and as commissions for his own business.

His experiences as a craftsperson and builder is interwoven with his formal education in college and graduate school. At Oberlin College and Alfred University, Evangelos studied fine art, exploring many processes, and media including photography, sculpture, sound, and video; eventually leading to dual approach to his woodworking through craft and art. He continues to believe that learning through handcraft and artistic expression are both important to the human experience.

His work has been exhibited at ArtFields in Lake City, SC; Materials: Hard + Soft in Denton, TX; and this past Summer with a solo exhibition at the Jerry Drown Wood Studio Gallery at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee . Evangelos will be teaching a one week course making small sculptures this summer at Arrowmont, entitled: Arti(s)fact, Wood is Fiction: Turning and Stacking Stories, based on his Ndoodem Series artwork.