To the
Welcome page and Contents list
An introduction to Ray G. VarnBuhler,
not-very-famous distant relative of the famous VarnbŸlers of Germany and
Switzerland.
Ray
VarnBuhler grew up in Detroit, Michigan.
He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Design from Wayne State
University in Detroit, Michigan, and later a Master of Fine Arts degree in
Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His early career included approximately
10 years working as a professional graphic designer in New York and
Detroit. In Detroit he worked for
the three largest graphic design firms in that city, and for several years was
the art director of an in-company promotion art department supervising a
four-person staff. He and his
department received several awards for their work during that period, and the
promotion department efforts achieved record results for the company.
While
working as a designer, he also continued working and exhibiting as a fine
artist. In addition, he taught a Creative
Thinking course in an adult evening
school program for six semesters.
Between
1973 and 1998 he was a professor teaching graphic design. After 1985 he also taught computer art
and graphic design. He taught at
Arizona State University (Tempe, Arizona) for six years, and from 1980 to 1998
at the University of the Pacific (Stockton, California). At Arizona State University the graphic
design program became one of the best and most recognized in the country. Feature articles about the Graphic
Design Workshop, which he initiated and co-directed, appeared in both Print and Communication Arts, (the two foremost graphic design publications in
the USA). The students' work won
over 40 awards in both student and professional level national competitions,
and an exhibition of their work was circulated by the Arizona Commission on the
Arts and Humanities. At the
University of the Pacific his students continued to win awards, in national
computer art competitions as well as in graphic design. He developed the computer art lab and
computer art courses in the Department of Art.
Ray
received several grants and awards during his teaching career, the most
important of which was a Fulbright grant to teach and conduct research in
Turkey in the 1987-88 academic year.
A result of the research was the publication of a 13-page article, "At
the Crossroads: Graphic Design in Turkey" (Print magazine, January/February, 1990) which showed the
work of many contemporary Turkish graphic designers. He is listed in Who's Who in American Education, 4th
Edition, 1994-95.
In
1982-83 he was commissioned to do eleven color cover illustrations for Alfred
Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, a
nationally circulated magazine based in New York. He did illustrations for several other publications as well,
such as Sacramento magazine, Games, Ranger Rick's Nature Magazine for children, and The Detroit Free Press. His
illustrations have also been used in advertisements for Upjohn, General Motors,
Ford, National Bank of Detroit, and others.
Throughout
his teaching and professional design careers he continued his involvement with
fine art. His work was shown in several solo, group, and national competitive
exhibitions including: The Michigan Artist's Biennial, Detroit Institute of
Arts; Drawings U.S.A., Minnesota Museum of Art; several exhibitions at the
Scottsdale (Arizona) Center for the Arts; Artwords and Bookworks, Los Angeles
Institute of Contemporary Art; over 100 mail art or artist's book exhibitions
in the U.S.A. and many foreign countries; several computer art exhibitions
(awards); and one-man exhibitions at Arizona State University, University of
the Pacific, and galleries in Sacramento, California.
He
exhibited work in the following media: painting (acrylic, gouache, oil,
watercolor), sculpture, mixed media, drawing, color and hand-tinted
photography, conceptual art, computer art, color xerox, artist's books, postal
art, assemblage, collage, frottage, resins, ceramics, and weaving. In recent years he has worked with a
Macintosh computer as a design and fine art medium, using graphics programs
such as Illustrator, Freehand, Photoshop, PageMaker/InDesign CS2, and Painter.
Ray
and his wife Gay have traveled extensively. Their travel experiences include: Turkey, Egypt, Nepal,
Tibet, China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia (Java and Bali), Thailand, Cambodia
(Angkor), Myanmar/Burma, Laos, Japan, Taiwan, Morocco, Peru, Belize, Guatemala,
Chile (Easter Island and Santiago), Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Czech
Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Great Britain; also Mexico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii (Kauai,
and The Big Island), and Canada.
They have traveled to some countries multiple times, for example India
(5 times), Myanmar/Burma (2), Turkey (2), Nepal (3), China (2), as well as
Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and many of the European countries.
Among
his many other interests are: creativity and creative problem solving, nature,
hiking, Buddhist art, Islamic art, Asian art, folk/naive art and architecture,
and genealogy.
After
his retirement from teaching in 1998 he traced his family roots to Germany and
Switzerland as far back as 1375, and created a family genealogy web site.
Ray
and Gay met in high school and have been married 47 years (as of October
2007). They have two married
children and 4 grandchildren.
Their children were valedictorian and salutatorian, respectively, of
their high school graduating classes, and both graduated from the University of
California at Davis, one summa cum laude. Ray and Gay have lived
since 1980 on 24 acres in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada
mountains.