Since our building renovation was completed in 2010, JHU Press staff have been given a chance to show off unknown talents. Staff and visitors have enjoyed seeing changing exhibits of art by brave members of the JHU Press staff. Who knew?
The IT department’s Jim Fragomeni has shown his photography several times, most recently displaying a striking, large-format photograph of Baltimore’s “Graffiti Alley,” a vibrant cul-de-sac near the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Jim Fragomeni next to his “Graffiti Alley.”
Other staff artists have included HFS manager Davida Gypsy Breier whose up close and personal chicken portraits have brightened our walls, senior editor Bob Brugger’s compelling watercolors painted while stationed at Camp Courtney, Okinawa, in the fall of 1967, striking photography by two artists, Colleen Condon and Keli Strickland, and senior graphic artist Susan Ventura whose painting is shown below. My Father’s House depicts a favorite window and view at Susan’s family cottage in Oak Harbor, Ohio, looking north toward Lake Erie. It is hanging in an area where employees often have lunch and pretend they are on vacation.
Susan Ventura’s “My Father’s House.”
Glass cases feature publications by editorial director Greg Britton, Davida Gypsy Breier, and production coordinator Robert Schreur. The case has also featured the work of talented book and journals designers.
Two Book Jackets with Stories To Tell
Among the admirers of Jim’s photograph mentioned above was our art director, Martha Sewall, who asked to use it on the jacket of Tapping Into the Wire: The Real Urban Crisis, by 
Peter Beilenson, M.D., M.P.H., and Patrick A. McGuire. “Jim’s photograph captures something real and honest about Baltimore,” notes Sewell, “but does that with a sort of vibrancy, even optimism, that suits a book that looks beyond very tough problems to consider possible solutions. Besides, it’s a really beautiful photograph. The perfect choice—hanging right here in the building.”
And, in a move that finally lets the marketing staff add “adorable” to the list of adjectives used to describe our books (joining authoritative, insightful, ground-breaking, masterful), the jacket for A Parent’s Guide to Children’s Medicines, by Edward Bell, features “The Triplets,” Lou, Rose, and Frank, children of former online promotions manager Colleen Condon and her husband Anthony Kopera.
