Emery Bopp
Encyclopedia
Emery Bopp was an artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 and long-time chairman of the Division of Art, Bob Jones University
Bob Jones University
Bob Jones University is a private, for-profit, non-denominational Protestant university in Greenville, South Carolina.The university was founded in 1927 by Bob Jones, Sr. , an evangelist and contemporary of Billy Sunday...

.

Early life and education

Bopp was born in Corry, Pennsylvania
Corry, Pennsylvania
Corry is a city located in northwestern Pennsylvania in the United States. With a population of 6,834 at the 2000 United States Census, it is the second largest city in Erie County. Corry is a part of the Erie Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 but largely reared in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

, except for an impressionable year spent living with a grandfather in rural Stony Creek, New York
Stony Creek, New York
Stony Creek is a town in the southwest part of Warren County, New York, United States. It is northwest of the city of Glens Falls and is part of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 743 at the 2000 census. The town is named for a stream that flows through it...

. After graduating from Louisville Male High School
Louisville Male High School
Louisville Male Traditional High School is a public secondary school serving students in grades 9 through 12 in the southside of Louisville, Kentucky, USA. It is part of the Jefferson County Public School District....

 in 1942, he enlisted in the U. S. Navy and served as a hospital corpsman at a naval convalescent hospital in Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the 11th largest city in North Carolina. The City is home to the United States National Climatic Data Center , which is the world's largest active...

 within walking distance of the Biltmore Estate
Biltmore Estate
Biltmore House is a Châteauesque-styled mansion near Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at and featuring 250 rooms...

, where he was “overwhelmed by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains
Blue Ridge Mountains
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. This province consists of northern and southern physiographic regions, which divide near the Roanoke River gap. The mountain range is located in the eastern United States, starting at its southern-most...

.” Bopp had early displayed artistic as well as musical and athletic ability, and in the hospital corps he was put to work designing invitations and party decorations. Eventually he also used crafts to speed rehabilitation of convalescent servicemen.

Deciding to become an illustrator, Bopp enrolled (with G. I. Bill money) at Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 in Brooklyn, where he studied with Kosrov Ajootian and Fritz Eichenberg
Fritz Eichenberg
Fritz Eichenberg was a German-American illustrator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice and nonviolence....

. He then moved on to the Yale University School of Art, where he received his BFA
Bachelor of Fine Arts
In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...

 in 1951 and where his artistic vision was expanded by study under Josef Albers
Josef Albers
Josef Albers was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century....

, Alvin Eisenmann, Alvin Lustig
Alvin Lustig
Alvin Lustig was an American graphic designer and typeface designer. He studied at Los Angeles City College, Art Center, and independently with Frank Lloyd Wright and Jean Charlot. He began designing for books in 1937. In 1944 he became Director of Visual Research for Look Magazine. He also...

, and Willem De Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....

. He later attended New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 and earned an MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...

 at Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester Institute of Technology
The Rochester Institute of Technology is a private university, located within the town of Henrietta in metropolitan Rochester, New York, United States...

 in 1961.

Art teacher

“Having a strong sense of his Christian faith,” in 1951 Bopp joined the art faculty of Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville, South Carolina
-Law and government:The city of Greenville adopted the Council-Manager form of municipal government in 1976.-History:The area was part of the Cherokee Nation's protected grounds after the Treaty of 1763, which ended the French and Indian War. No White man was allowed to enter, though some families...

. Two years later, as a thirty-year-old, he was named chair of the Division, a position he held for the next 39 years. Later chided by colleagues for investing more time in teaching than in his own work, Bopp responded that teaching was itself “a high calling, an art form with a lasting fruit.”

Artistic career

Bopp was an active member of the South Carolina Artist’s Guild, exhibiting extensively and adjudicating competitions throughout the southeast. He won numerous awards, and his work is represented in such museums and permanent collections as the Addison Gallery of American Art
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art, as a department of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art...

, Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy is a selective, co-educational independent boarding high school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12, along with a post-graduate year...

, the Hunter Gallery in Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga is the fourth-largest city in the US state of Tennessee , with a population of 169,887. It is the seat of Hamilton County...

, the South Carolina Arts Commission, Erskine College
Erskine College
Erskine College is a four year, Christian liberal arts college located in Due West, South Carolina.-Early history:Established in 1839 by the Associate Reformed Synod of the South as an academy for men, Erskine College became the first four year, church-related college in South Carolina...

, the High Museum of Art
High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art , located in Atlanta, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States and one of the most-visited art museums in the world. Located on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district, the High is a division of the Woodruff Arts Center.-History:The Museum was...

, and the Greenville County Museum of Art
Greenville County Museum of Art
The Greenville County Museum of Art is an art museum located in Greenville, South Carolina. Its collections focus mainly on American art, and its holdings include works by Andrew Wyeth, Josef Albers, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Ronnie Landfield, Eric Fischl, Marylyn...

. Bopp also produced sculpture; and for thirty summers, he was associated with the studio of Louis Paul Jonas.

Bopp was a versatile artist using a variety of pictorial techniques in his paintings. One critic noted the unusual amount of design in his work and praised its “master craftsmanship.” Bopp himself said he thought he might have made “a carpenter instead of a painter.” Bopp also emphasized spiritual symbolism with a “subtle interaction of color and the geometric construction of shape and space” that indicated the influence of Albers. Bopp stressed “the contemplative, intellectual element in his work,” in one case basing a symbolic painting reflecting Platonic
Platonic idealism
Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas,Some commentators hold Plato argued that truth is an abstraction...

 universals on Escape from Reason
Escape from Reason
Escape From Reason is a philosophical work written by American theologian and Christian apologist Francis A. Schaeffer, London: InterVarsity Press, first published in 1968. It is Book Two in Volume One of The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer A Christian Worldview. Westchester, IL:Crossway...

(1968) by Francis Schaeffer
Francis Schaeffer
Francis August Schaeffer was an American Evangelical Christian theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor. He is most famous for his writings and his establishment of the L'Abri community in Switzerland...

.

Personal life

In 1970, Bopp joined two other BJU faculty members, Darell Koons
Darell Koons
Darrell John Koons an American painter, was for forty years a member of the art faculty at Bob Jones University.-Biography:...

 and Carl Blair
Carl Blair
Carl Blair is an artist and was for more than forty years a member of the art faculty at Bob Jones University.-Biography:...

, in founding Hampton III Gallery, one of the first commercial galleries in Upstate South Carolina. Bopp also enjoyed performing in BJU films and Shakespearean productions, nearly making a career of playing harmless old men.

In 1948, Bopp married Marian Meyer. They had three children, including Jay Bopp, who eventually succeeded his father as chairman of the BJU Division of Art. In 2003 Emery Bopp was diagnosed with a form of Alzheimer’s disease, but he continued to paint and held a final exhibition at Hampton III Gallery in November 2006. He died on February 1, 2007.
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