Barry Drost is an artist and educator who earned an M.A. in 1969 from the University of California, Davis. His graduate studies coincided with a period of experimentation at UC Davis, when artists were exploring unconventional materials and new approaches to image-making. Drost taught art at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, while maintaining his artistic practice. His work included experiments with color photocopying, a relatively new technology that artists began adopting as a creative medium during the 1970s. In 1978, the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham presented his exhibition Barry Drost: Color Xeroxes and Recent Works, documenting his engagement with emerging methods of mechanical image reproduction. Drost participated in the development of copy art, an experimental practice that challenged conventional distinctions between original artworks and mechanically reproduced images.