Rochester’s Barb DeHart is quick to sidestep the title “photographer,” but that doesn’t mean she won’t capture your eye.
DeHart is a retired business owner. She had a company that manufactured equipment for the electronics industry for three decades in Burlington, Mass. She retired to Rochester, Vt., and following the death of her husband in 1999 began investing more time in traveling.
“The photography sort of came along secondary,” says DeHart, who with little more than a basic point-and-shoot camera captured penguins on the Falkland Islands of Antarctica, polar bears in the Arctic Circle in Norway and on the Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada, and brown Kodiak bears and cubs in Alaska.
DeHart brought the images of never-seen-in-Vermont, frolicking wildlife home, printed them and hung them on her wall.
Friends took one look and encouraged her to do more with the stunning images.
Last fall, some of her works were part of the Middlebury Arts Walk.
Still DeHart downplays them.
“I’m not a professional at all. My byline is ‘Photos for Fun.’ It’s just to make people smile,” she says self-consciously.
Her nerves stem from presenting her works for the first time in a gallery show. Beginning Wednesday afternoon, DeHart’s images of penguins, polar bears and Kodiak cubs will be in the Gifford Medical Center art gallery in Randolph.
The show runs two months, until March 26, and is free and open to the public.
“It’s kind of overwhelming,” says DeHart, who in her regular life is a Rochester Budget and Finance Committee member, chairwoman of the Trustees of Public Funds and a justice of the peace.
Going forward, DeHart will continue to travel. She has a trip planned that will mean seeing more polar bears. And she will continue to take photos.
“It’s become a new hobby. Maybe it will become an avocation. But it’s been fun,” DeHart says.
Join the fun. See her show “Penguins, Polar Bears and Kodiak Cubs” from Jan. 29-March 26 at Gifford. The gallery is located just inside the hospital’s main entrance at 44 S. Main St. (Route 12) in Randolph. Call Gifford at (802) 728-7000 or Volunteer Coordinator Julie Fischer at (802) 728-2324 for more information.
