A homecoming for artist Terry Copen

Curator Mark Ruschman opening “The Gardener”

In the painting triptych “Son Hero”, completed in 1985 by the late Terry Copen, the subject is a man in profile. The man is stuck inside the maelstrom of his own thoughts, surrounded by darkness. The painting references Copen’s fraught relationship with his father.

The look of the painting is matched by the support medium. That is, Copen painted “Son Hero” on three coffin lids bound together.

In the exhibition Terry Copen (1950-2021) at the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center, you’ll find unusual (some might say funereal) choices in terms of media and brooding subjects. But you’ll also find occasional playfulness and a sense of humor.

Copen, who was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1950, wasn’t as well-known an artist as he might have been. This is because he was not interested at all in self-promotion, according to gallery coordinator Mark Ruschman, who has admired Copen’s art for over 30 years.  “It’s image-making, it’s narrative, it’s expressionistic; it’s aggressive and multimedia,” he said of Copen’s art. “Then later on he starts to get into more of a vein of primitive work or folk art influence.”

“Wakelessness” painted around 1992, is one of the paintings on the more expressionistic side, depicting a family unit —  parents and a baby — in a dreamscape forest.

“Wakelessness” (Detail) by Terry Copen (Oil on wood panel)

According to Ruschman, this painting is all about Copen’s waking up at night as a new parent, worrying about whether his baby daughter was okay. 

 “The Gardener” is one of the paintings where the “folk influence” is prominent. This mixed media construction is lined with 24 individual woodcut panels. (You might be reminded here of panels in a graphic novel.)  These panels line doors that open up, like cupboard doors, revealing a painting triptych. The central panel in this triptych reveals a man neck-deep in a pool of water that evokes the subject of “Son Hero.” But, with its depictions of a gardener in an Edenic gardens in the process of gardening in the one of the side panels, “The Gardener” seems much more hopeful.  (On the other hand, in the other side panel, the same Edenic garden seems to be in the process of strangling its gardener.)

Some of Copen’s preliminary work and sketches hang alongside corresponding work in the exhibition.  

“Terry was a prolific list maker and sketch maker,” Ruschman said. “All of these pieces are very methodically mapped out. And some of them may look spontaneous or whatnot, which is an attribution to his talent.”

Some of his mixed media work is exceptionally intricate.

In the wall-hanging “Swimming Pool” you see carved slats of wood in multiple layers, painted to represent the waves of a pool. The palette is bright and cheerful, a world apart from “Son Hero.”

Perhaps the most humorous work in the exhibition, at least in terms of title, is “Ryder Meets Goya on a Pale Goat.”

This wall-hanging construction features a funky skeleton riding on a goat, while aboard a wreck of a ship, if not a shipwreck. The title references “The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse)” by American painter Albert Pinkham Ryder.

“Ryder Meets Goya on a Pale Goat” by Terry Copen

It was at the Herron School of Art and Design, which Copen attended from 1981-1985, where Copen became interested in sculptural work. In addition to the wall hanging constructions in this exhibition, there are freestanding constructions. Similar work was featured in the 2014 exhibition 431 Gallery: Art & Impact at the Indiana State Museum. (Ruschman, who is the museum’s Fine Arts Curator, curated that show as well.)

Copen was part of the group that helped birth the Mass Ave arts scene in the 1980s as one of the founding members of the nonprofit artist-run 431 Gallery, which began operating in 1984.

These founding influences came under the influence of Steve Mannheimer, who taught at the Herron School of Art and Design.

Ruschman credits Mannheimer with encouraging his students to stay in Indianapolis instead of going to Chicago or New York to start a career.  

“He challenged them to do something here, to kind of capitalize on the beginnings of a new contemporary art scene in Indianapolis,” Ruschman says.

Copen helped create a vital contemporary art scene in the Circle City but he would spend his final decades in Texas. After moving there in 2003, he continued to work as a studio artist. He fought a prolonged battle with cancer, which he succumbed to in February, 2021.  

The wall hanging painting/construction “No Personhood Detected”, which was on Copen’s easel when he died. It seems to reference the age of social media with its totems and scientific charts. Running through the chart is a green heart monitor line —   a flatline —   showing no activity whatsoever.   

Ruschman is placing Copen’s works with various institutions around the state.  This is in accord with Copen’s widow, Katherine Ellis Copen, who didn’t want to sell the work. Instead, she wanted people to experience and appreciate her husband’s work in public gallery settings, rather than sell it to private collectors, Ruschman said.

And that’s why she contacted him after her husband died.

“Terry always felt like he had a real home here. that he had a community,” Ruschman said. “When was living all the years that he was down in Texas, he was pretty much just in his studio working …  So I've been reaching out to various museums and so forth in the area. And I'm in the process of placing pieces right now.”

Among the institutions that will house Copen’s work are the Indiana State Museum and the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette.

“So as the show comes to a close pieces will start to go out the door,” Ruschman said.  

The retrospective exhibition Terry Copen (1950 - 2021) runs through Dec. 17 at the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center.

“Son Hero” by Terry Copen