Translucent Huts 1996 - 1997

Copeland received a Fulbright Fellowship in Rome, Italy in 1996 to study Etruscan funerary hut urns through a process of drawing and sculpting, a project that proved vital in his development as an architect and artist. Using a papier mâche technique – of wire mesh, vellum, and acrylic – he developed a series of translucent studies that explored the shapes and spaces of the urn forms relative to themselves and to the huts they represented.

Hut-House Installation (15’ x 9’ x 6’ - bamboo, twine, wire mesh, vellum, acrylic, clay - 1997)

Rome, Italy

Interest in Copeland's Fulbright work led to three separate solo drawing and sculpture shows: at the American Academy and the Swedish Institute in Rome (where he hand-built an interpretive bamboo-lashed full-scale Hut-House Installation ), and the Erector Square Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. Subsequently Copeland was named Excavation Architect (1997 - 1999) for the archeological dig at Poggio Civitate (Murlo) Siena – a rare Etruscan habitation site where during Copeland’s tenure as excavation architect an archaic period drinking well was discovered, excavated and documented.