He studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and, for a time, shared a showroom there with woodworker Phillip Lloyd Powell.
Without much money, the partners would get their wood from the reject pile of their neighbor, the woodworker and furniture designer George Nakashima.
According to the New York Times, Evans "understood fashion, embraced youth culture and built custom pieces for celebrities like the ventriloquist Shari Lewis and the singer Roy Orbison.
Evans's combination of handcraft and technology anticipated the limited-edition art furniture of today.
In 2014, the James A. Michener Art Museum, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, staged a retrospective of Evans's work.