Barbara Ferrell Hero, 1971
EDUCATION:
1981 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA , Summer Program, Computer Sound Synthesis
1977-1981 Boston University, Boston, MA, M.A., Mathematics Education
1961-1970 New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA Extension Division. Piano, Theory, Composition, and Violin.
1946-1950 George Washington University, Washington D.C., B.A., Fine Arts and Commercial Art
1944-46 Bennington College, Bennington VT, Art, Dance, Poetry and Architecture.
EXHIBITIONS:
Solo Shows:
1974 Max Protecht Gallery, "Stop and Think", Washington D.C.
1973 Notre Dame College, Manchester, NH, "In Honor of Copernicus".
1973 Keating Gallery, Brooks School, North Andover, MA
1969 Adelaide Ungerland, New York, NY, (Illustration of White River Series #17), The Art Gallery
1967 Eleanor Rigelhoupt Gallery, Boston, MA
Group Shows:
1992 Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA "Mind Paths in Painting", two-person show with mother Lucile Evans
1984-1985 Pyramid Gallery,"Music to My Eyes: Six Artists and the Visual Score", Pyramid Art Center, Rochester, NY
1981 Harcus-Krakow, Prison Art Project, (Exhibition of Artist Instructors), Boston, MA
1979-1980 Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichitaw, Kansas, "Artists and Books,The Literal Use of Time", book: "Eyes + Ears = Ideas"
1976 Franklin Furnace, New York, NY
1973 Nashua Arts and Science Center, "Art in Science", Nashua, NH
1973 National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.
1972-73 Ward-Nasse Gallery, Boston and New York Salon
1972 Lamont Gallery, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH
1971 Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA
1971 Boston Visual Arts Union, City Hall, Boston, MA
1970 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
1970 University of Massachusets, Boston, MA , "Worlds of Their Own"
1969 NEREM (Art Technology Inc), War Memorial Auditorium, Boston, MA
1966 Pennsylvania Academy, 161st Annual Exhibit of American Painting and Sculpture Philadelphia, PA
1963-64 Mary Harriman Gallery, Boston, MA
1961 Riverside Museum, Brooklyn, NY
1960 Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC
1959 Busch-Reisenger Museum, Cambridge, MA
1952 Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
1951 The Corcoran Gallery of Art, "Contemporary American Artists Series #10, Lucile Evans and Barbara Ferrell" Washington DC
1948 University of California, Los Angeles, CA
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY
Miami Dade University, Miami, FL
The 180 Beacon Collection of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
PROFESSIONAL HISTORY:
1980-1992 Lecturer at the United States Psychotronics Association
1990 Boston Architectural Center, Lecture
1989 The Foundation for Timeless Architecture, "Exploring Architectural Resonance", Lecture
1983-1992 New York Academy of Sciences
1980-81 Prison Art Project, Bridgewater, MA
1975-1984 The Third Nail, Boston, MA Art Therapist in Drug Rehabilitation Program.
1975 Visiting Artist Lecture Series, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA Department of Art, "Paintings Based on Relative Pitch in Music"
1970s Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS:
1986 "International Harmony Based upon Music of Planetary Grid Systems", pgs. 198-210 Chapter 7 in Anti-Gravity and the World Grid, edited by David Hatcher Childress, Adventures Unlimited Press, Steele, IL c.1986
1982 Article: "The Mathematical Laws of Sound (Relationship of Sound to Gravity)", Energy Unlimited, Vol. 12, Los Lunas, NM
1978 Article: "Drawings Based On Laser Lissajous Figures and the Lambdoma Diagram", Leonardo, Vol. II, pages 301 -303
1975 Article: "Drawings Based on Relative Pitch in Music", Leonardo, Vol VIII, pages 13-21
1975 " Eyes+Ears=Ideas, by Barbara Hero", (A copy was purchased by the Wichitaw State University Library), self published.
1973 Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Award (National Community Art Competition) and publication of a reproduction of a Music Graph painting in the National Community Arts Program, Washington DC
1971 Book review of Edward Lockspeiser's Music and Painting, Leonardo, Vol VII, Fall Issue
1969 The Art Gallery, Reproduction of painting from the White River Series, November
1969 White River Series painting used as an illustration for chapter 14 entitled, "Transformations" in the textbook: Modern School Mathematics Geometry, by Jurgenson, Donnelly and Dolciani, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, MA
1966 The Christian Science Monitor, review in the Forum, Dec. 5, La Revue Modern des Arts et de la Vie, Contemporary Art in America from the 161st Pennsylvania Academy Exhibition
1951 Monograph by Charles Buckley, Series#10, Contemporary American Artist Series, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
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BIO:
Barbara Ferrell Hero was born in 1925 in Los Angeles California. She was exposed to art at a young age by her mother, Lucile Evans who was a painter and printmaker. After high school, Barbara attended Bennington College in Vermont where she studied architecture with Richard Neutra and dance with Martha Graham. Following Bennington, she moved to Washington DC where she earned a degree in commercial art from George Washington University. In the late 1940s and early 50s, Barbara began to establish a reputation as an abstract artist, sharing a studio with her mother, Lucile Evans. Both of them had a two-person show at the Corcoran Gallery in 1951. In 1954, she married Alfred Olivier Hero Jr. and moved to Boston, where she had four children. They divorced in 1971
From 1961 to 1970, Barbara became interested in the relationships between art and music and explored this interest in her
artwork. This inspiration resulted in three stylistic "series" of work; the "Back Bay Series", "White River Series" and "Music Graphs Series". From the early 1970s on, Barbara found herself more drawn to mathematics, geometry, and Pythagorean theories of number ratios, She became fascinated with linking these mathematic formulas to sounds, shapes, and colors. This exploration expressed itself in her "Space Scale Series" and became the inspiration for all of her later work. She began experimenting with multimedia, incorporating computer generated sounds and images into her artwork. Gradually this interest lead her away from painting and more into math, science and music studies and how they might have therapeutic applications in the field of alternative medicine. This interest coincided with her experiences teaching art therapy. From 1975-1984, Barbara was an art therapist for a drug rehabilitation program in Boston called The Third Nail. She also participated in The Prison Art Project, where she taught art to inmates at Bridgewater Prison. As a facilitator of these programs , she had the opportunity to experience first hand how art and sound could have positive therapeutic applications. She went on to publish articles, compose music, invent a pythagorean based computer generated sound keyboard, and give lectures and demonstrations on her theories and research. For more information about Barbara's theories and research relating to the the Pythagorean theorem and its potential applications, visit her website: lambdoma.com
Barbara moved to Wells, Maine from Boston in 1981 where she lived until 2013. She then moved to Bradenton FL, where she lived under the care of her eldest daughter until her death in 2021 at the age of 96.
CONTACT:
barbaraferrellhero.art@gmail.com