Acker

The Essex Corp., a Columbia-based military contractor that has been hammered by defense cutbacks, announced yesterday it would sell up to $2.5 million worth of stock in an attempt to fund its move into civilian markets.The move was praised yesterday by one of the few stock analysts still paying attention to the company's shares: Brooklyn, N.Y.-based investor Bob Acker, author of The Acker Letter.Mr. Acker, who started recommending Essex stock several years ago when he noticed insiders were buying shares while the stock price was falling, conceded that Essex has been having financial difficulties.

In the basement of a New Windsor church this past weekend, Jessica Bowen and some of her friends got a taste of hunger they're likely to remember as the time when chewing gum never looked so appetizing."

Both the sculptures of Karen Acker and the paintings of Emilio Cruz are based on the human figure and use somewhat unusual combinations of materials, and that's only the beginning of what they have in common.Cruz begins with long, narrow white birch panels which he covers with a layer of gesso. On this he then draws the human figure in charcoal and covers it with a layer of beeswax, into which he cuts deep lines to create additional drawing. Finally he adds paint.Acker combines porcelain, steel and sometimes wood into sculptures which also have reference to the human body.

There's no doubt about it, Harry Letaw Jr. is a class A optimist.In one breath yesterday, the chairman and chief executive of Essex Corp. told shareholders about company losses, a 50 percent drop in sales over the past three years and the fact that the company's major bank was about to fly the coop.In the next breath, he was projecting a three-fold growth in revenues by the end of 1995, accompanied by a 15 percent annual return on stockholders' equity."We have a growth plan," Mr. Letaw told the 30 or so shareholders who attended the company's annual meeting at its corporate headquarters in Columbia.

Macrophytes. Typha latifola. Herbaceous. Turbidity.Big words, certain to produce sweaty palms for those who remember grappling with the finer points of biology and botany in school.Taylorsville resident Ellsworth Acker isn't one for sweaty palms. He throws back his head, chuckles and gives a visitor a kindly refresher course that is not the least bit patronizing."Macrophytes are large aquatic plants and Typha latifola is nothing more than cattails," he says. "Herbaceous plants have soft, green stems, while turbidity refers to the cloudiness of water."

Karen Acker must be the "(or not)" part of Galerie Francoise's current five-sculptor show, titled "Whimsy (or not);" all the other sculptors could conceivably be thought whimsical, but Acker's work is positively scary.Her surrealist parts of bodies, made of porcelain and perched on spindly legged bases, are like nightmares of what might happen to us, physically and otherwise. Her "Trunk" is just that -- a headless and limbless trunk, wrapped as if in bandages. The mummified piece is a reminder of the endlessness of death, of all kinds of things that can befall us, and of how constricted our lives are, compared to what they might be. Looking at it, one wants to use one's arms and legs and senses more than ever before, because soon enough one won't be able to use them at all.Her "Trap" is a body with holes in it, again suggesting how the body breaks down with time, but also the kinds of "holes" or flaws that are not seen -- of character, for instance.

Sculptor Karen Acker's shapes of delicate porcelain, with surfaces that look like skin, are put together into compelling works at the School 33 Art Center; they have the perverse fascination of something horrible that you can't takes your eyes off of.A faculty member at Goucher College, Acker showed some of her porcelain and steel sculptures there in the spring. The broken and pierced bodies of those surrealist works were a kind of physical manifestation of fears and neuroses, such as might occur in dreams.

Under hazy skies, two stenciled words on the black-and-white sign at the entrance gate to the Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine today brought huge disappointment for local residents and out-of-towners alike."