Dale Copeland

Dale Devereux Copeland, MNZM (born 1943), is a New Zealand collage and assemblage artist.
She was born in Taranaki in 1943. B.Sc., Dip.Soc.Sc. and M.A., 1st class Hons in Mathematics. Offered Massey Doctoral Scholarship in Chaos Theory '97. Taught Maths and Physics, mostly at New Plymouth Girls High School and Okato College. Changed direction to art. Lives at Puniho with painter Paul Hutchinson. She has a Fourth Degree Black belt in Taekwon-Do (gained in 2011 at the age of 68).
Copeland has worked in collage, jewellery, book-making, photography and sculpture, but her favoured medium is assemblage or box-art : careful constructions of treasured objects.
Copeland's assemblage artwork has been described as “joy in jetsam, philosophy in flotsam”. She finds discarded objects and puts them together not as narratives but as encapsulations of the human condition. “Bricolage” – philosophy in the found.
She runs the annual International Collage Exhibition/Exchange, has written several books, and writes websites for artists, including the Virtual Tart site for Taranaki artists. Copeland was appointed Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to the arts.