Barbara Balzer is a European-award winning artist whose figurative ceramic work has been exhibited around the world. Most recently, her work won the prestigious President de la Generalitat Valenciana Award—First Prize at the X Bienal Internacional de la Cerámica in Spain and is included in the Museo de Cerámica de Manises’ permanent collection. Another work, “All Her Suicide Notes Read the Same/Bubbles, Dandelions and Smoke,” will be exhibited alongside works by Rembrandt, Goya, Dürer and the Chapman Brothers in “Morbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection,” at the Chicago Cultural Center. Barbara’s work was also included in the Inaugural Exhibition of the Florida Museum for Women Artists. She is the recipient of two State of Florida Artist Enhancement Grants and a Florida Individual Artist Grant.

While at the University of Iowa as a European Literature and Thought major, Barbara enrolled in a summer ceramic course under Chuck Hines and has been transfixed by the materiality and expressive values of clay ever since. While she has accomplished many things— qualifying for the First Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials, writing Florida’s Lemon Law as a Florida Senate Staff Attorney— Barbara has always explored with clay, at night, on the weekends, at the dining room table. Initially self-taught, she pursued a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Florida State University College of Dance and Visual Arts, which was within walking distance of her home. Her work is now exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world.

Barbara considers herself one in a long line of figurative sculptors, beginning with the humble artisans who shaped the Venus of Willendorf 25,000 years ago in what is now Austria. A studio artist residing in Tallahassee, Florida, Barbara continues her struggle with the human form, always in service of an idea.