IN THE ANNEX: SEPTEMBER 2022

August 31 - September 25
Elisa Lanzi + Ellen Foust + Jim Fenzel

SoWa First Friday Art Walk: Friday, September 1, 2022, | 5:00–8:00 PM

PRESS RELEASE (PDF) ➢

PRICE LIST (PDF) ➢ 

Elisa Lanzi

This moment on Earth signals an axial shift; an inescapable point when Nature responds to humankind’s folly in her own spectacular way. As we crave refuge from a world gone wrong, Elisa Lanzi envisions alternate cosmos while we shelter in place. Spheres and foliate forms from nature and the built world crop up as universal rhythms. Original hand-pulled prints, collage, handmade paper, and artists’ books with her haiku poems are infused with spirit-stirring color. Lanzi draws inspiration from sojourns to the Mediterranean, the American West and New England; her work responds to visual motifs that span centuries and geography, emerging in similar and diverse ways. Cultural migrations, conquests, religion, and mythology are woven into the mix

Raised in an artistic family, Lanzi has created art through study and practice since her early days. College art history and literature studies accompanied by studio work have been advanced by apprenticeships and workshops. A member of The Boston Printmakers and the Monotype Guild of New England, her work is exhibited frequently in juried and invitational settings, including solo shows. She is represented in the Smith College Special Collections, the Zea Mays Printmaking Flat File and the Herman B. Wells Library-University of Indiana, Bloomington. Lanzi also teaches workshops including paper-making history for the Book Studies Concentration at Smith College. She lives in western Massachusetts.

Ellen Foust

Ellen Foust is a photographic artist with a keen sense of observation and the patience to study her subjects over time. Her series, Light + Pipe, exemplifies her strong sense of visual design. In her process she observes how light re-envisions banal objects into poetic graphical interplays of light and dark. Her images have bold linear and curvilinear shadows that dance with the forms that created them, counterpointing negative and positive shapes, smooth and rough textures. To see all possibilities, Foust approaches her subjects from multiple vantage points. This results in bold images that upon first sight delight viewers and on second look beckon them into thoughtful exploration.

Foust received her MA in Art History from Rutgers University and studied photography at the New England School of Photography. She is currently a photography instructor at the Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and the Lexington Arts and Crafts Society. Her work has been shown throughout the Boston Area and is in private collections in the US and Europe. Upcoming solo juried shows include the Newton Free Library and Newton City Hall. Her photographs have been published in The Watermark Journal, UMass Boston’s literary magazine. She works out of her studio in Newton, Massachusetts.

Jim Fenzel

Jim Fenzel is a Connecticut-based painter who uses bold color, crisp lines, and geometric shapes to depict architecture from urban to rural, grand to mundane. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs explains the lack of illustrations in her book by imploring readers to look at real cities, and “[w]hile you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.” This advice serves as Jim’s inspiration; he walks about at all times of day (even circling the block in the middle of the night with a screaming infant resisting sleep), during all weather and seasons, and absorbs a neighborhood’s architecture and the scenes of people interacting with it. A former English teacher, Fenzel takes some rules ( “omit needless words”) and philosophies (such as Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” of omission) that he taught in class and applies them to his compositions using a straightforward style with pop art elements.

Fenzel earned a Master’s of Architecture from Pratt Institute in 2011. His work has appeared in juried shows throughout New England. He currently has pieces showing in Yates County, NY and West Hartford, CT. His work can be found in private collections in Groton, CT, West Hartford, CT, New York, NY, and East Hampton, NY