Thursday, October 11, 2012

The Exciting Photography Of Barb Vogel

By Leigh Bean


Photography is one of the most exciting media for creating art and documenting life. A good photographer's work can be just as interesting and visually appealing as a painting by one of the great masters. Add some unusual photographic techniques and you have works that truly stand out in a crowd of pictures. Someone who has mastered this art is Barb Vogel.

An Ohio native, Barbara lives and works mainly in Columbus. She spent her childhood in Granville, after which she studied at the Ohio State University. There she first obtained a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, majoring in painting, and then she went on to obtain a Master's in photography.

Unusual photographic processes are what characterize the artist's work. One of her specialties is working with encaustic processes. This involves taking photographs, often intentionally out of focus, and then scanning the negatives. From these scans she prints the images, mounts them and then coats them. This is then fused in wax and pigment. The result is a collection of images with a blurry, dreamy quality.

One of the main themes in Barbara's work is family and friends. For example, one of her series created with encaustic processes is 'Portraits of Friends and Family'. Another family-themed series is the 'House Collage Series'. Here she printed family photographs on canvas, against houses as backdrops. Memorabilia arranged in collage form added a personal touch. Fusing the images in caustic pigment resulted in beautifully intimate, colorful images.

'Portraits in Wood' is a series where Barbara used wood as medium. She made black-and-white negatives of photographs that she found when going through family pictures and yearbooks. Using these negatives, she printed the images onto wood that she had coated with emulsion. Then she used oil paint to add color and carved into the wood to create texture. In this way, her fifty family portraits in this series seemed to come to life.

After a friend dared her to create a series of straightforward black-and-white pictures, Barbara started photographing her hometown, Columbus, Ohio. The resulting silver gelatin prints document not only the personality of a city, but also the artist's love for this place she calls home. This series led to another, where Barbara traveled along US Route 1 between Fort Kent in Maine and Key West in Florida. The 2,209-mile route was the source of more than two thousand negatives that show a country rich in diversity.

Barbara has received many awards for her work. In 2012, Ohio's Arts Council granted her a residency in Johnson, Vermont at the Vermont Studio Center. She has also widely exhibited her work, including a show hosted by the Springfield Museum of Art.

If you would like to see new works by Barb Vogel, there are two exhibitions to look forward to in 2013. In March there is a show called 'Diverse' at the Ross Museum. This is in Delaware, Ohio and the show will include works by seven female artists. In May Barbara will also take part in a joint exhibition with Eileen Woods and Paula Nees. This will take place at Newark, Ohio's The Works Gallery.




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