Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Amazing Talent That Is Barb Vogel

By Casandra Cotton


Barb Vogel is a visual artist and photographer from Ohio. Her artwork often focuses on themes of family and with the passage of time. Over the years, Barbara has earned many awards and has gained significant professional experience as a curator, photography instructor, college faculty member, and much more.

Growing up in Granville, Ohio, Barbara attained a B. F. A. In art, and proceeded to go on to earn an M. F. A. In photography from the State University of Ohio. She has partaken in countless exhibits and events and even boasted a solo display in 2011 at the Museum of Art in Springfield, Ohio. Within the very same year she was honored with a professional acknowledgement at the State Fair.

The Arts Council of Ohio will be promoting her throughout a residency at the Vermont Studio, which is to take place in September of this year. Presently Barbara is an active participant of an artist cooperative which is located in Columbus, and known as Spring Street Studios. She is also a fellow associate of "Creative Arts for Women" and the Ohio Art League.

Upcoming endeavors include a group exhibit to be hosted in Delaware, Ohio around March 2013. This distinct exhibition will be titled "Diverse" and shall be made up of six additional female artists. Her next display will feature Eileen Woods, and will be happening at The Works Gallery in Newark during the month of May.

In 2009, Barbara received The Ohio Art Council's Award for Individual Artists, for her unique encaustic portrait work. Encaustic works, specifically the photographs of family and also friends, tend to be taken with negative color film. This is then scanned and then printed and fitted onto a board, which is finally fused together with pigment and then coated.

These kinds of images have a tendency to be caught out of focus, which is in fact the artist's intention. The exact effect was used on Barbara's Cosmos Fall series. Her House Collage series is truly intriguing, merely because it incorporates photos of her own family members. These pictures were printed onto a canvas and then paired together with personal mementos which were then fused.

Barbara's portraits in wood were inspired by photographs and memorabilia from her family's personal collection. Many of these items were discovered before the sale of her parent's home and she decided that this was a way to preserve those images. For the wood portraits, a simple artistic process is followed. A black and white negative is made of the image and it is then printed onto a wooden surface. The surface is coated with emulsion and oil paints and carving into the surface make each piece come alive. Barbara has completed fifty portraits in this particular series which includes all of her first cousins.

You can contact Barb Vogel through her website if you have questions or comments regarding her artwork and upcoming exhibitions or projects. Her work in both photography and painting is always unique and inspiring. It is both bright and dramatic, allowing the viewer to have an alternative interpretation of an otherwise straightforward image.




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