IN THE ANNEX: JUNE 2023
Julia Fragomeni + Laura Menucci + Eli Portman
June 1– 25, 2023
SoWa First Friday Art Walk: Friday, June 2, 2023 | 5:00–8:00 PM
In June, we see Annex artists Julia Fragomeni, Laura Menucci, and Eli Portman take inspiration from their interest in human connections and perception. Portman examines the experience of solitude. Menucci focuses on communication. Fragomeni loves the way seeing a printed photograph will remind her of a small detail of a past encounter with family or stranger.
PRICE LIST (PDF) ➢
Julia Fragomeni
Julia Fragomeni is a film photographer who specializes in documentary and street photography. In her street photography, she is drawn to eccentric people and activities and moments that only last a few seconds. In her series “Rest and Relaxation” Fragomeni captures displays of loneliness, extreme emotions and contrasting colors. She finds photographing family, friends, and strangers to be equally beautiful. The analog process of shooting film makes the photos even more rewarding for her because of the delay in seeing the developed photo. Moments with strangers that she had completely forgotten come back to her, and she remembers the little things--a color, an article of clothing, a facial expression--that drew her to them in the first place. Fragomeni is been influenced by artists such as Joel Meyerowitz, Garry Winogrand, and Vivian Maier.
Julia Fragomeni was born and raised in Florida. She has earned an Associate of Arts in Film Studiesfrom Santa Fe College in Gainesville. She moved to Boston to attend Emerson College. In 2021, she was an intern for the Boston Jewish Film Festival. Her photograph, Bench Warmer, featured in this exhibition, was also displayed at the nearby Bromfield Gallery in Winter 2022. Fragomeni offers freelance work utilizing her documentary style.
Laura Menucci
Laura Menucci, an artist and art therapist, is deeply curious about the human instinct to make art as a way to communicate and understand experiences. Her work as a painter and mixed media artist investigates connections. She is specifically interested in intersections, interconnectedness, and synchronicities – how we feel them, when we notice them, and the impact they have on both a conscious and unconscious level. Her work, thoughtfully arranged graphic compositions of color and shape, creates a pause – a time to consider our relativity and to draw meaning from moments and often overlooked alignments. Menucci’s work, a register connection, reminds us of our interrelatedness.
Laura Menucci, MPS-ATR, received a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from the University of Vermont, a Master of Professional Studies in Art Therapy and Creativity Development from Pratt Institute, and a Certificate in Non-Profit Management and Leadership from INP at Tufts University. Menucci has exhibited her work locally in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. Art making and guiding others in exploring the creative process has been her life’s work. Her community-minded spirit and deep passion for the arts, rich with communicative and transformative powers, have led her to connect and create art with thousands of people of all ages around the world. As an artist, art facilitator, teaching artist, and therapist, Menucci has engaged with a variety of client types, including corporate, non-profit, educational, healthcare, museum, and municipal.
Eli Portman
Eli Portman is a Boston area painter and illustrator who is fascinated with the concept of perception. With his work, he approaches the dissonance between perceived, unique individual solitude in a crowded environment and the commonness and sameness of such feelings. Examples would be the feeling of walking alone while viewing social excitement through nighttime windows, or working while others play to their contentment. Using detailed line work and heavy colors Portman captures shadows and lights and attracts the viewer’s eyes to specific spaces within the composition. This emphasis highlights familiar angles, feelings brought on by time of day or night, and placement and presence in one’s environment. His manipulation of the openness and tightness of visual spaces and interiors reflects the claustrophobia of society's open space and the endless emptiness of being crowded and crushed. Though others in the crowd do not know him, he and they are united by the sameness of our shared humanity.
Portman has a BA in Studio art from State University of New York, Binghamton, and works from a studio in the Fenway neighborhood. He is a member of the Copley Society of Art, and has displayed his work in local libraries, galleries, and universities.