Artist

As soon as Lauri and Jeff Zell saw Steven Shapiro's treasure chest at a silent auction for charity, they knew it belonged in their home. Crafted as a fantasy art piece, the trunk had a sophisticated funkiness and a unique style the Zells loved. They had no doubt about their choice. It would fit perfectly in their family room.Describing her taste in decorating as "eclectic," Mrs. Zell adds that she and her husband "always keep our eyes open for things that we think will punch up the design of our home."

A new exhibit at St. John's College in Annapolis gives an intimate look at some of the more creative minds and personalities of the past couple of centuries. The Artist Revealed: Artist Portraits and Self-Portraits features portraits and self-portraits of Charlie Chaplin, C.S. Lewis, Ansel Adams and James McNeill Whistler, among others. Multiple mediums are used, including oils, etchings, lithography and woodcuts. The exhibit opens Saturday and runs through Oct. 21 at the gallery at St. John's College, 60 College Ave. in Annapolis.

Charles T. Newton Jr., a Fells Point artist who chronicled the city and its bustling waterfront, died of cancer Tuesday at Cherrywood Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Reisterstown. He was 74. An artist whose work hangs in many downtown barrooms, Mr. Newton had lived for many years on Regester Street. Born in Baltimore and raised in Woodlawn, he graduated from Forest Park High School. He then enlisted in the Army and served with occupation forces in Japan until being discharged in 1948.

An artist whose prints of Ku Klux Klansmen caused a community outcry has withdrawn his work from a showing at Harford Community College.The drawings, several of which showed hooded and robed Klansmen, prompted an emergency meeting of the school's multicultural advisory committee Tuesday night, during which several area residents described the prints as "menacing."Dan Witmer, the artist, attended that meeting and decided Wednesday to end his show, which began July 22 and was scheduled to run through Aug. 28 in the Chesapeake Gallery.

Taking its origins from 17th-century Paris salons, the summer salon show tradition flourishes every July at Annapolis galleries, which hold invitational exhibits to showcase artists' new works. Last weekend this event was celebrated at McBride Gallery on Main Street, where for the past 29 years gallery owner Cynthia McBride has introduced a growing number of first-rate representational artists to local admirers. The shows encourage artists and viewers to get acquainted through an understanding of the artist's work.

"The Artist of the Missing," by Paul LaFarge. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 241 pages. $13.Some novels are absolutely engrossing even if one is never quite sure what they are about. Sentences, pages and finally whole chapters go by in patient anticipation that the mystery will dissolve and everything will become clear.Most authors sooner or later oblige readers' desire for resolution. Paul LaFarge, whose "Artist of the Missing" tantalizes without ever quite allowing itself to be pinned down, is an exception.

Well, of course, New York installation artist Fred Wilson is delighted to be one of the 32 recipients of this year's John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grants.You could even say thrilled, stunned, happy, excited and profoundly and forever grateful. "The whole thing is a blur," he says, still sounding shocked even though the announcement came in late June.Wilson, 44, is the artist whose 1992 exhibition at the Maryland Historical Society played a catalytic role in how museums view themselves.

MAN, JULIE DEXTER sure loves to talk. Her British-accented words breeze by like a breathless scat solo. She pauses. "I'm sorry," the singer-songwriter says. "Am I going too fast?" "Go 'head," I tell her. "You're cool." Then she's off again, going on about her commitment to her craft and her new album, Conscious. The artist -- whose work stubbornly defies categorization as it incorporates elements of jazz, reggae, pop and ambient trance music -- is calling from her home in Atlanta. On the phone, she buzzes with energy, zipping from one topic to another, excusing herself to answer the other phone in the house.

Richard Irwin Kolchin, a retired Aberdeen Proving Ground official and an artist, died of Alzheimer's disease Wednesday at Perry Point Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The Aberdeen resident was 77. Mr. Kolchin was born and raised in New York City, and served in the Navy during the final months of World War II as a seaman aboard the carrier USS Princeton in the Pacific. After the war, he studied mechanical engineering on the GI Bill at New York University, earning his degree in 1948. Mr. Kolchin was drafted into the Army in 1950 and served as an engineer until 1952.

Writers and musicians were quick to recognize the advantages of computer technology, but artists have been relatively slow to give up their palettes and easels in return for the millions of colors and magic canvases that computers offer.It isn't that artists are slow; it's just that drawing with a computer mouse is like trying to draw with a potato. It lacks elegance.Throw out the mouse. A remarkable tool called the Wacom SD-510C pressure-sensitive digitizer (list price $695), which comprises a cordless, pen-like stylus and a 6-inch by 9-inch tablet, comes close to being a magic paintbrush.