Snow and red barns. If Loren Fisher and Bob Wagner, co-owners of Focus–A Vermont Gallery, had to sum up what people are most drawn to, it’s images of snow and red barns. The name of the bestselling photograph in the gallery, Snowy Barn, shot by Loren, features, you guessed it, snow and a red barn.

While people like you and me seek shelter when the snow is falling, Loren and Bob head outdoors. They know they’ll find the ground around the barn, fence, home, or whatever structure they’re drawn to will be pure, untouched by animal or human, shovel, or plow. Plus, the falling snow creates a scrim of sorts that helps soften or even erase some of the detail. Loren’s Three Skiers, for example, shows brightly clad folks on their downhill journey with no evidence of how they got there.

These snowy assists helped Bob capture my favorite image in the gallery. Rolled Hay is a photograph of a small, aging red barn with a rusty tin roof and two sliding doors. One is open to expose several bales of hay, warm tan in color, arranged so there is a hole in the shape of a stretched maple leaf in the middle of the bales. “I love the color, I love the patina, the roof, the barn, and the snow falling,” Bob says, but being an engineer earlier in life, he is fixated on the leaf-shaped space. “I can’t figure out how they took the bale in the middle out and how everything else didn’t just collapse.”

 

Location, Location, Location

As photographers, being in the right place is important. As business owners, the same holds. In 2020, during the pandemic, Focus Vermont opened at 1 The Green. It was a good place to be. “Everybody in town had to walk past that space,” Bob says, “and that just brought in lots of people.”

But there were compromises to be made in a space comprised of rooms once used for living. “It was fitting a gallery into a house,” Loren says. They stayed for four years, and when the rents got too high—New York City high, as Loren notes—the gallery moved to a large space on Elm Street, a location better suited for local traffic than tourist traffic. And though the rent was much lower, this location, too, was a compromise given how “far” they were off the tourist trail. In the gallery’s new space, there is no compromise.

 

From Pharmaceuticals to Photographs

Residents and visitors alike—at least those who were here before 2020—know the space Focus Vermont is in now, 19 Central Street, as half of the Woodstock Pharmacy. In fact, every resident and visitor since 1842 knew this space as a pharmacy.

Walking into the building today, it’s hard, if not impossible, to recall Woodstock Pharmacy. Thalia Tringo purchased the building in 2021 and began renovations. She and her crew returned the arched tops to the first-floor windows, as they were originally when the building was built. “It took 18 months to find somebody who would restore the windows to the original, and they were expensive,” Thalia says, “but it was still worth doing.”

While she was working on renovations, she first thought a restaurant would be ideal for the space. But with no infrastructure in the building suitable for cooking, it wasn’t feasible. People approached Thalia with ideas for yet another clothing or home store. She declined. “It’s really important to have variety,” Thalia says. “Plus I wanted to preserve a local business that existed rather than having somebody come in.”

Focus Vermont had been in contact with Thalia about renting the space, and she decided that the gallery would be an excellent occupant. Thus began the second part of the renovations, turning the empty space into a gallery. “One of the reasons I love the space,” Loren says, “is that we were able to build it out to show photos in the best possible way.”

Inside Focus Vermont, you may be too distracted by Loren and Bob’s art to notice some of the build-out details. The flooring, for example, is five-inch-wide white oak. You may notice tall baseboards along the perimeter walls. At 10 inches tall, it notes the maximum height of the floorings that had accumulated over the years. If you remember the pharmacy, you’ll recall that there were two steps from the sidewalk to get into the building. Now there is just one. As for the entryway, it shares the arched shape of the windows and a large door, which will help people with mobility issues enter the gallery. For those using wheelchairs, there is a ramp under an overhang at the back of the building.

In addition to the multiple floors, the building also had multiple ceilings. After several of those were removed, the gallery now boasts 12 feet of vertical space. The fluorescent lights are also gone, replaced by 49 lights on tracks and 20 recessed into the ceiling, all LED and all simulating daylight, making it easier to view and appreciate the photography on display.

 

Beyond Snow and Barns

You won’t only see snow and red barns at Focus Vermont. Our state has four seasons (five, if you count mud season, but who would want images from that time of year?). It has houses, fields, mountains, trees, and a stunning night sky. You’ll find all of that and more in the gallery, including a masterly interior still life shot by Bob—not Focus Vermont’s usual fare, but worth a moment to ponder if it is made of pixels or paint.

Though finding the perfect images to fill the gallery can be dangerous if the weather is bad, time-consuming if the conditions aren’t perfect, or patience-testing if foliage takes days longer than expected to reach peak, there is something Loren and Bob experience that makes it worthwhile. “Frequently, when I’m alone out shooting,” Loren says, “I scream, ‘How lucky am I?’ Because this is happening for me, and nobody else is seeing this.” That is true until the photographers put the images they captured on canvas, paper, or metal and hang them in the gallery. Then we get to experience Loren and Bob’s talent, their epiphanies, and the beauty of Vermont—and the gallery—in comfort and safety.

 

Focus–A Vermont Gallery

19 Central Street

Woodstock, VT

(802) 457-7327

http://focusvermont.com/