Current Show

The stage is set for 'Miss Saigon's' three-month run at 0) Kennedy CenterHow do you follow up a mega-hit musical adaptation of the epic novel "Les Miserables"? That show's composer, Claude-Michel Schonberg, and lyricist, Alain Boublil, turned to Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" and came up with a Vietnamized version called "Miss Saigon," which begins a three-month engagement at Washington's Kennedy Center on Tuesday.Set in Saigon in 1975, the musical -- currently in its fifth year on London's West End and its third year on Broadway -- re-casts the main characters as a GI and a Vietnamese bar girl.

Carmen Amedori, 52, is a resident of Westminster and was a state delegate representing Carroll County from 1999 until 2004, when she was appointed to serve on the Maryland Parole Commission during the Ehrlich administration. A Baltimore native and a graduate of Villa Julie College (now Stevenson University), Amedori worked as a paralegal and journalist while raising two daughters before entering the world of politics. She was one of the few elected officials in Maryland who supported John McCain when he ran for president in 2000 and was an alternate delegate at that year's convention.

"General Assembly," the title of Mill River Gallery's current show, describes it well, for it brings together a group of diverse artists. Teressa Blickenstaff-Kitts presents photographs relative to her husband's battle with cancer. Michael Lichter's figurative works recall the bizarre paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Lee Wayne Mills and Rhona L. K. Schonwald specialize in abstraction. Trudi Y. Ludwig and Stephen DeLuca incorporate humor in their works.There are artists well known in the region, such as sculptor Rodney Carroll, and newcomers such as sculptor Selena Reames.

The summer sculpture show at C. Grimaldis gallery presents a half-dozen artists who have had solo exhibitions at the venue over the past two years and whose return as a group offers gallery patrons an opportunity to revisit some of the highlights of previous seasons. Grimaldis introduced Baltimoreans to German artist Annette Sauermann's luminous wall-relief sculptures in 2004, when her series of rectangular cast concrete blocks linked by thin, translucent sheets of white plastic film were first shown at the gallery.

Norris Embry, who lived in Baltimore for 17 years before his death in 1981, was interested in the art of the mentally ill and suffered from mental illness himself. In the current show of his work at Grimaldis, it is easy -- too easy, really -- to see the evidence of disturbance in the obsessively covered surfaces with their floating faces, which can often seem the manifestations of inner demons.Embry was a trained artist -- he went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later studied with Oskar Kokoschka -- and the influences of formal training and German expressionism are just as strongly evident here.

This month's group show at Gallery International is the first exhibition to include works by Baltimore-area artists since the gallery opened its doors nearly two years ago. In addition to an international roster of artists that includes Uruguayans Cecilia Miquez and Arturo Mallman, Spain's Marc Quintana and Luis Perez Espinosa and Russians Isaak Feldman and Mikhail Gubin, the current show presents local artists Jim Paulsen, Leigh Maddox, Tom Supensky, Laura...

Mary Carfagno Ferguson takes inspiration for her drawings from everyday sights, such as this charcoal called "Empty Vessel," simply a cup standing near a window and beside a lace curtain whose shadow creates an appealing pattern on the sunlit sill. Ferguson is one of three artists in the current show at Resurgam. The other two are Sally Kearsley, who introduces sacred themes into works that span a range of media from drawings to paintings to ceramics; and Bonnie North, whose jewelry combines precious metals, alloys, semi-precious stones and pearls.

Artshowcase, an art gallery at 336 N. Charles St. devoted to showing the works of Maryland artists, will close on Aug. 28, at the end of its current show. J. E. Dockery, who operated the gallery on Charles Street since June 1991, said yesterday that he will continue acting as an agent for Maryland artists to sell from their studios.Artshowcase first opened at the Baltimore Design Center at North and Howard streets in 1990 and moved to Charles Street the following year. In the three years the gallery was open, Mr. Dockery said, he sold $100,000 worth of art. "That isn't enough to cover the nut, being the overhead for a first-class gallery on Charles Street," he said.

Baskets from Cameroon grasslands, textiles from Liberia -- decorative arts from nine different West African countries will be on exhibit starting Feb. 19 in the art gallery on Montgomery College's Rockville campus. The collection of more than 70 items gives a fascinating glimpse of daily life, from cooking and furniture to entertainment (such as a musical instrument from Sierra Leone).For hours and directions, call (301) 279-5115.Visionary giftsThe new American Visionary Art Museum and its Joy America Cafe have gotten most of the press, but don't overlook the museum shop at 800 Key Highway.

Impressionist art stays current Baltimore art lovers have a rare opportunity to shop for contemporary impressionist paintings by artist Reini Maters at Zaucha Interiors, 517 York Rd., Towson, now through Dec. 23. Maters was born in the Netherlands and has traveled the globe, but now lives in Cockeysville. His accessible, light-filled works hang in public and private spaces all over the world. The 35 works in the current show include portraits and landscapes of places from Arizona to the Netherlands.

WHEN GRACE HARTIGAN WAS A LITTLE girl, she was bewitched by gypsies. In the 1930s, the Travelers still roamed the countryside in nomadic caravans, and young Grace would shinny up the apple tree in her parents' backyard in Newark, N.J., to spy on them. She spent hours watching the women in colorful skirts and big hoop earrings telling fortunes, the men sharpening their knives. GRACE HARTIGAN: PORTRAITS FROM THE MASTERS, NEW PAINTINGS / / Exhibit runs through April 29 / / C. Grimaldis Gallery, 523 N. Charles St. / / Admission is free / / Call 410-539-1080 or visit cgrimaldisgallery.

Walters' manuscripts More than 20 illuminated manuscripts are on display in a cool, dim gallery at the Walters Art Museum in a show called Illuminating the Word: Gospel Books in the Middle Ages. The books originate from Europe and North Africa. Pages open for view are intensely detailed, illustrated with brilliant colors and covered in text written in ancient languages. One page is almost entirely brushed with gold. Another is covered with delicate Irish lattice designs. One manuscript dates from 875 A.D., is worth millions of dollars and will not be on display again for at least five years.

This month's group show at Gallery International is the first exhibition to include works by Baltimore-area artists since the gallery opened its doors nearly two years ago. In addition to an international roster of artists that includes Uruguayans Cecilia Miquez and Arturo Mallman, Spain's Marc Quintana and Luis Perez Espinosa and Russians Isaak Feldman and Mikhail Gubin, the current show presents local artists Jim Paulsen, Leigh Maddox, Tom Supensky, Laura...

The etchings and drawings exhibition on view at the Maryland Federation of Art's City Gallery on Charles Street may be one of the loveliest shows in town this month, which makes the imminent prospect of losing such a sparkling venue all the more troubling. City Gallery director Pam Wilson said last week that the MFA, which has long supported a distinguished exhibition venue in Annapolis, is seriously considering giving up its Baltimore space because of financial pressures. If that were to happen, the current show, which runs through Nov. 15, could be among the gallery's last.

Impressionist art stays current Baltimore art lovers have a rare opportunity to shop for contemporary impressionist paintings by artist Reini Maters at Zaucha Interiors, 517 York Rd., Towson, now through Dec. 23. Maters was born in the Netherlands and has traveled the globe, but now lives in Cockeysville. His accessible, light-filled works hang in public and private spaces all over the world. The 35 works in the current show include portraits and landscapes of places from Arizona to the Netherlands.

Michael Bolton is on his cell phone, talking about his current concert tour while sitting in a Chicago dressing room, when a member of the production crew interrupts him. "I'm sorry," Bolton says, cutting the conversation short, "They're telling me the show has begun. I have to get into my stage clothes, and go out and get nailed to a cross." Under any other circumstance, one would take that to mean Bolton was about to perform for a crowd of rock critics. In this case, however, he's being quite literal, because the opening number in Bolton's current show - a semi-theatrical spectacular entitled "The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber" (which opens at the Lyric Opera House this evening)

The etchings and drawings exhibition on view at the Maryland Federation of Art's City Gallery on Charles Street may be one of the loveliest shows in town this month, which makes the imminent prospect of losing such a sparkling venue all the more troubling. City Gallery director Pam Wilson said last week that the MFA, which has long supported a distinguished exhibition venue in Annapolis, is seriously considering giving up its Baltimore space because of financial pressures. If that were to happen, the current show, which runs through Nov. 15, could be among the gallery's last.

ARTThe look of the landscapeIn the Maryland landscapes he has painted for the past two decades, Eugene Leake has proceeded from the tangible to the intangible. He is interested not so much in the objects of a landscape as in the effects produced by such phenomena as light and air, and his work has grown increasingly poetic over the years. The current show of his paintings at the C. Grimaldis Gallery continues through Nov. 1. Call (410) 539-1080. "Captains Courageous," the musical receiving its world premiere at Ford's Theatre in Washington (511 10th St., N.W.)

Goya Girl Press is a Baltimore gem that surely deserves wider recognition and appreciation. Started in 1996 by artist Martha Macks, the press' studio at Mill Centre in Hampden provides workshop space, equipment and the services of two master printers who collaborate with artists to create works in a variety of printmaking media, including etching, lithography, screen printing and monotype. The press also operates a gallery for works by local and nationally recognized artists and a publishing business that distributes prints by selected artists.

Joan Erbe has always been fascinated with the unusual. Recently she found three of her childhood drawings, from the 1930s, and just for fun they're included in her current show at the Gomez Gallery. Their subject matter is the circus.Over the decades she has developed a style in which weird-looking characters in colorful costumes find themselves in abnormal situations. These pictures combine a childlike interest in strange creatures and an atmosphere that's slightly unset- tling and sometimes almost sinister.