Sawdust in His Blood - Artist Carves out His Niche

Sawdust in his blood - Artist carves out his niche By Deb Zeiner The Gazette newspaper, Emporia, KS January 24 & 25, 2004

Western Chase County – DeCou, a mechanical that is a conflict with this About eight miles from engineer by trade, works artistic side of me, “ he nowhere, down a winding for a company in Wichita said. gravel road, there sits a four days a week. He and bright-painted house with a his wife, Shelli, are So DeCou has begun to big stone barn nearby and a transplants to Chase work a four-day work week workshop out back. It’s the County. The couple in Wichita, which will home of Mark DeCou and worked for a ministry near allow him more time to his family and the shop Cedar Point, Morning Star make and market his works where DeCou makes his Ranch, when they decided of art. dreams come to life. it was time to start a family, so they bought a small farm DeCou’s art is unique. DeCou is an artist who in the rolling country north Each handmade item takes creates hand-made pieces of Cedar Point. hours of time to create. from wood, horn, and stone. When they made that “ I spent four months decision, the couple working the evenings He grew up with sawdust in decided to live more simply (doing scrimshaw) on one his blood. – with no debt. And it is a horn, “ he said. “And I’ll “My dad was a wood-shop decision that DeCou said have 200 hours when I’m teacher and I had a wood neither regrets. finished on this rocking workbench in my chair.” bedroom,” he said one “ I used to do things I drizzly morning as he sat in thought would impress That many do not his shop. “In fact, I still people,” he said. “I bought appreciate the amount of have the bench. I all the right clothes and labor involved in remember getting tools for motorcycles and cars but handcrafted items dismays gifts when I was a kid, and when I got all of that DeCou. I just sat in my bedroom straightened out in my life, and made things.” everything changed for the “ I’ve made $1 or $2 an better.” hour for handcrafted He was still a boy when he furniture and $60 an hour first sold something he had But DeCou struggles doing sheet rock,” he said, made. between his dream of shaking his head. sustaining his family on “ I was hooked,” he said, earnings from his art and His shop is filled with tools laughing as he remembered the reality of needing a job he uses to coax new the feeling that came from to pay the bills. creations from unfinished making money on lumber or horns. A something he had created. “ The reality of life is you bookshelf above one have to make a living, and window is filled with books about other artists and that I have, my business has furniture styles and come together.” “What I’m finding with my everywhere are pieces of stuff is that unless you pick sculpture, or furniture, Boxes of antlers and horns it up and touch it, there DeCou’s works in progress. are ready for DeCou to use isn’t a connection,” he said. as handles on knives or “But people that pick it up On the floor, near a wood- powder horns. He said he and touch it and feel the burning stove, is a burled loves to do scrimshaw smoothness are the ones walnut rocking chair designs. that buy the stuff.” patterned after the work of California artist Sam “The hardest part is finding He is trying to find proof of Maloof. a horn,” he said. “Most Indian ancestry in his cattlemen don’t want horns family. “My great-great- “ I went to Indiana to a on their cattle, so you have great-grandmother on my school to learn how to do find someone with either mom’s side was Indian,” he that chair,” DeCou said. Mexican cattle or dairy said. “Bu, back then they “The reason I am interested cattle that aren’t dehorned.” didn’t document real well.” in this style is because Sam came up with a way to DeCou’s biggest obstacle to If DeCou could document combine sculpture and successfully marking his the ancestry, he could show woodworking.” work is geographical. “If I his art at tribal-sanctioned moved somewhere else, it shows. But for now, he The Maloof-Style chair has would be a ton easier to be can’t do that without the graceful, untraditional successful,” he said. “But proper verification. lines. my family is all in Kansas so we’re trying really hard “ This all just takes time, “ Maloof talks about how to make this go here.” and a lot of word of mouth, God is the instrument of “ he said. For information, your hands,” DeCou Said. So he is concentrating on call Mark DeCou at (620) “I had to change my his Web site, 273-8992. mindset to that and now www.decoustudio.com, and taking his work to shows