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This week we feature the wonderful illustrator Barbara Johansen Newman. Barbara has been illustrating professionally for more than 20 years. She’s done art for books, art for magazines and newspaper articles, art for calendars and advertising, greeting cards, corporate reports, medical reports, and invitations.

For the ten years before she was an illustrator, she worked with puppets and created figurative fiber sculptures which she has exhibited at shows and galleries around the country.

She holds  B.F.A. in Art and a ceritificate in Art Education.  She lives in Massachusetts with her husband Phil, her three sons, Dave, Mike, and Ben and her dog Bitty (in picture on left).

Here is a picture of Barbara’s studio.

When Barbara paints big, she uses antique dough boards. I asked about them and Barbara said, “They are large slabs of wood, usually one single plank wide, probably cut from old growth trees, mostly of pine. They are also called “noodle boards.” Women used them for kneading dough for bread and noodles of sorts. They are often fairly large–20 by 28 or more. Some have lips that hung over the edges of tables to make them more stable.”

Here’s a good example of one: http://www.antiquepeek.com/wood_dough_board_2.htm

I like painting on them and have purchased them whenever I can find them at a reasonable price.

This is the first color illustration assignment Barbara ever got–a piece on Turkey farms for Boston Magazine back in the 80s.

Tell us a little bit about the puppets and dolls you did right out of college.  Where the puppets marionettes? What materials did you use to make the dolls?

While I was still in college I met Lois Bohevesky and with her  and Frieda Gates I spent a summer studying puppetry and puppet making at the Bil Baird Theatre in New York. (it is no longer there)  I learned to make and operate hand puppets, rod puppets, and marionettes. That course planted the seed of a love of puppetry and everything puppet related. By summer’s end my future husband had built us a portable stage that could be used to do small shows. We packed up our rented van and moved to Buffalo, where we had transferred for our fall semester in college to be together. I posted puppet show flyers in different places and somehow we began to get calls and jobs from out of nowhere to do puppet shows all around the Buffalo area.

The big change in our lives came when we were hired to perform at a craft show. Instead of paying us a full fee, we took a table to sell puppets, because I had discovered that I loved making them as much as performing with them (actually more). After that show we were hired for othe