Barbara Tyroler
Barbara Tyroler is a photographic image-maker producing collaborative multi-media art projects that address social and cultural issues. As an educator, she blends fine art and humanitarian work, which is central to her art practice.
With a keen eye for detail and a unique artistic perspective, her portfolio showcases a blend of creative portrait consignments, fine art prints, small group workshops, and speaking engagements, making her not only a skilled photographer but also a passionate educator who shares her expertise with others. Through her lens, Barbara invites us to appreciate the power of visual storytelling.
Barbara’s professional methodology resides within the realm of community outreach, at the intersection of fine art and editorial photography. As an educator, she has always been fulfilled in sharing these experiences with others, teaching, and learning from her students as they progress and open themselves up to new ideas and approaches.
With an MFA in Imaging and Digital Arts and an M.Ed. in Community Education, Barbara utilizes her experience in both areas to provide imagery for her commercial and corporate clients as well as community advocacy organizations focusing on health and education. In the later years of her career, she has come to focus on project-funded work that enables her to enjoy the freedom and opportunity to concentrate on the experimental and humanitarian aspects of integrating art and community. Often spanning years in production, her portraits range from deeply layered multimedia collaborations with writers, artists, musicians, athletes, and educators, to semi-abstracted water imagery of children with neurological challenges. The common thread that weaves and connects these various projects is the artistic inspiration to create, propelled by a need to construct and share ideas.
Barbara’s work explores how the lens inspires the journey, how the photographic image evokes and conveys meaning creating and recreating stories and memories beyond the frame.
Ten Things I Can’t Do Without
- Family, of course—my husband—who is smart and wise, loving and generous with his love, and a left-brained rock with creative tendencies that are expressed though his ability to draw recognizable objects with our grandchildren and to play rock and roll on his bass, throughout his academic career and into retirement
- Family, of course, including our feisty, healthy, independent, and talented daughter, who may be the one to figure out what balancing work and life is all about, wife to an accomplished yet not-too-driven husband, and coparent to two exuberant young boys who do not stop until they are fully asleep
- Opportunities for teaching and learning; sharing and making a contribution through my photography
- An enriching community including my brothers, niece, and nephew, and extended family and friends, who are always there to support and inspire
- Coffee that ignites the inspirational muse (sometimes with dark chocolate or anything with salt)
- My cameras, computers, printers, and all things technology—except for paper, which I also love—the artistic and creative tools that enable the sparks to speak
- Music that motivates me to jump and dance in the racquetball courts when no one is looking
- Warmth—warm light and lots of it, warm water, warm weather, warm sweaters, especially warm socks
- Sunday New York Times (on paper)
- Hair defrizzer