Barb Miller received her BS in art Education from Ball State University in 1982 and MS in secondary education from IUSB in 2002. She has been teaching art in the South Bend area since the late 80s and has been at Penn High School since 1994. She currently teaches drawing and is the curator/director for the Penn Kingsmen Fine Art Gallery where they host a combination of professional and student exhibits. She is an active member of the Scholastic Art Committee that helps make the Scholastic Art Awards happen for junior high and high school students since 1994. She was a member of Fiber Artisans for 10 years until it disbanded, then joined Indiana Women’s Caucus for the Art in 2006 where she has stayed involved in annual exhibitions. Her work has been selected for the Midwest Museum of American Art Regional Juried Exhibit at least 8 out of 9 times she has entered and has appeared in a variety of galleries and exhibitions including a faculty show for South Bend Art Teachers in 1994 at The South Bend Museum of Art, a Faculty /Student show for the SBMA in 1993, a faculty show for PHM Teachers and Staff in 2012, and a solo retrospective exhibit at Fire Arts Gallery in South Bend in 2015 that displayed 72 of her diverse pieces.
Barb is a busy, diverse, and eclectic art teacher, who loves all forms of art, loves to make it, loves to teach it, and spread the joy and enrichment art has brought to her life with others. She is an advocate for the need for licensed professional art teachers in our public schools and says “ART is NOT a Luxury. “ It is necessary to our total brain growth and helps us be more balanced, happier, and better functioning individuals in general. Her areas of expertise in teaching have been drawing and photography and these areas factor into her work, but she does quite a variety of artwork including drawing, printmaking, textiles, fibers, photography, sculpture, jewelery, collage, and any combination of these these areas. She likes to mix things up a bit and tries to also keep a bit of humor in my work and titles. She tires not to take herself too seriously and finds creating art can be an outlet when life becomes burdensome. Her work is rarely political or for greater social statements, but mostly just for and about the love of making art. She is involved in fostering dogs with the local animal rescue organization, Heartland Small Animal Rescue, and you will often find this theme of love for dogs, animals, and nature shows up in her artwork and her poetry.