Gallery

The writing really is on the wall. In the engaging and nuanced production of Sight Unseen running at Everyman Theatre through Oct. 7, the signature of Jonathan Waxman -- reproduced again and again -- surrounds the characters. That wide, aggressive loop on the capital "J," the confident swoop of the final "n" -- it covers the walls of Jonathan's art gallery in London, and of a British farmhouse near the North Sea. That signature is worth millions. It belongs to a painter so famous that his canvases are bought for exorbitant prices before he has even had a chance to create them -- hence the title.

Women's self-portraits Head to the Q Building Gallery at CCBC Catonsville to see Mirror Me: Self-Portraits by Women. The exhibit, which runs today through Oct. 30, shows works by such artists as Joyce J. Scott, Mary K. Cloonan and Oletha DeVane. Free. The gallery is open noon-8 p.m. and is at 800 S. Rolling Road. Call 410-455- 6050.

The Medford National Guard Armory in Annapolis was transformed into a gallery last weekend as the Historic Annapolis Foundation held an antiques show there.

Drawings by 10 artists constitute Maryland Art Place's new exhibit, Between the Lines. The works explore lines, marks and shapes and the ways they are used to build visual imagery. Between the Lines is also one of the gallery's first large-scale exhibitions in some time. Between the Lines opens Tuesday and runs through Feb. 10 at Maryland Art Place, 8 Market Place in Power Plant Live. There will be a gallery talk and reception starting at 6 p.m. Feb. 2. Hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays.

In Baltimore CountyFire that killed Dundalk family is ruled accidentalDUNDALK -- Investigators have determined that the fire that killed a family of six in their home in Dundalk on Friday morning was accidental, said a Baltimore County Fire Department spokesman.Battalion Chief Mark Hubbard said investigators are looking at several possible sources of the fire, including a smoker in the family, a frayed extension cord and a few electrical sockets.The swift-moving fire ruined the house in the 100 block of Williams Ave. Killed in the blaze were Raymond G. Jamison, 36; his sons Raymond Jamison, 12, and Jacob Jamison, 10; his wife Marie, 33; and her two sons from a previous marriage, James McCready, 10, and his 6-year-old brother Brandon.

Mission: To provide emerging and established artists with professional exhibition opportunities; encourage the study, practice, collection and appreciation of fine art in Maryland; and to provide educational opportunities for community enrichment and artists' professional development. Organized in 1963, the MFA has been operating the Gallery on the Circle in Annapolis since 1968.Latest accomplishments: Last spring, the gallery initiated the "Artists After School Workshop Series." The community outreach program provides mixed-media art programs for children in school-based afternoon care, culminating in an exhibit.

Madeleine Keesing and Dan Kuhne are the proverbial underappreciated local artists who have never sold a painting or been accepted by a commercial gallery. One wonders what the art world has been thinking of.Kuhne, who once was a rising star of the Washington, D.C., Color School, quit abstraction for landscape decades ago and fell into undeserved obscurity for thinking and seeing things differently.Keesing, who has been working quietly on her intricate, pointillist designs since the 1960s, has never been accorded the attention she deserves.

Nearly too late I caught up with the group show "On Site/In Sight" at Maryland Art Place, which runs through Saturday. It is a fascinating and troublesome exhibition that deserves a longer run (it opened June 8), if only to allow the public more time to ponder the thorny issues it raises.The show was curated by Timothy App and Allyn Massey, who asked a dozen regional artists to create works directly on the walls of MAP's first- and second-floor galleries. Though the curators chose the artists, there was no way for them to know exactly what the artists would create to address the specific site.

The vivid colors of Asian art and figurative drawing of the Western tradition come together in the large oil on paper works of Steven Yu at Gomez Gallery through Aug. 29. Yu's precise draftsmanship and brilliant reds and blues give his pieces a surface brilliance and visual intensity that mark this young artist as someone to watch.The Gomez Gallery is at 3600 Clipper Mill Road. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. For information, call 410-662-9510.

The Women Artists' Forum of Baltimore is a group of emerging professional artists founded in the spring of 1997 to learn about art-related issues. It is open to artists in the Baltimore region and so far has organized two shows of members' work. The current one is at Resurgam Gallery on South Charles Street and features works by 28 of the current 37 members. Among them are Helene Ageloff, Frances Aubrey, Mary Catalano, Ruth Channing, Marge Feldman, Nancy Linden, Sally Sanford Ney, Beverly Polt, Michelle Santos and Bert Wallace.

The walls of the up-market, by-appointment-only Thomas Segal Gallery are usually filled with the work of what director Jennifer Strasbaugh calls "blue chip artists" - the likes of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Elsworth Kelly. Not to mention Wolf Kahn, whose distinctively colored oils and pastels the gallery has featured extensively for more than 30 years. Kahn is well represented in the latest Segal show, "Landscapes and Exteriors," but he's sharing space this time, in something of a departure for the gallery, which has been in Baltimore for 13 years after two decades in Boston.

When Elise Siegel, the owner and curator of the intimate Positron Gallery in Mount Vernon, says her focus is contemporary art, she means contemporary. "My whole idea was to come up with a theme for each exhibit and have the artists make their art interpreting that theme in the month before the show. They can lie," she says with a laugh, "but they're supposed to create it in that time." Paul Maier, one of eight local artists in Positron's current exhibit, calls Siegel's approach "a wonderful challenge.

Helping to put the art in this weekend's Artscape are several galleries outside the immediate, jammed-packed festival area. Among exhibits being put on in conjunction with the annual celebration are two at Towson University's Center for the Arts. The Holtzman Gallery houses Genesis of Form, a look at the starting concept for an artwork and the final result, featuring sculptors from TU, the Maryland Institute College of Art and University of Maryland. And Local Color, in the Center for the Arts Gallery, offers a juried show from 2009 Artscape visual arts entries, including photography, painting and drawing by artists throughout the Baltimore region.

Seth Adelsberger and Alex Ebstein built an art gallery out of a mental blueprint, a meager budget and low expectations. In the past seven months, their bright idea has morphed into a light-flooded venue called Nudashank. Their budget, alas, is still meager. And those expectations? A mere seven weeks after opening, and in the worst economic climate in decades, the gallery is on the brink of becoming profitable. Adelsberger, a painter, and Ebstein, a freelance writer and blogger, renovated a ramshackle west-side apartment into an appealing studio.

In June 2006, my family and I went on a cruise to Alaska. When we were in Anchorage, we bought several pieces of artwork at a local gallery. One of the pieces needed some work, and it was supposed to be shipped to me in six months. After six months, I called the gallery and was told that it was not ready. It's been three years, and I'm still waiting for the artwork. I don't want to sue. I just want my money back or some artwork worth $6,500, which is how much I paid for it. This is one of those stories that makes your heart sink progressively deeper as you try to unravel it. The usual protections just aren't there, even though you think they are. To wit: * You paid by credit card.

The Howard County Central Library, 10375 Little Patuxent Parkway, will observe Holocaust Remembrance Day at 7 p.m. April 21. Edith Cord will recount the story of a youth spent hiding from the Nazis. Born in Vienna in 1928, Cord was the second child of observant Jewish parents. She and her family left Vienna for Italy in 1937 and subsequently fled to France, where her father was arrested as an enemy alien. Eventually, her father and brother were sent to Auschwitz, and Cord lived hidden in Vichy France.

Hugh Harrell Jr., a former Baltimore sculptor and painter, died Wednesday of cardiac arrest at a hospital in Hampton, Va. He was 82. Born and raised in Hampton, Mr. Harrell exhibited an interest in painting and drawing at an early age. By the time he was 12, he was sitting in on art classes at what is now Hampton University. He attended Phoenix High School in Hampton until enlisting in the Navy during World War II. He served aboard a minesweeper, the USS Hogan, in the Pacific Theater.

Richard Roberts Harwood Jr., a former business executive who later owned and operated a Charles Street art gallery, died of cancer Saturday at his North Baltimore home. He was 87. Known as "Boots," Mr. Harwood filled his Purnell Galleries with etchings of old Baltimore, Civil War-era lithographs and sporting prints, as well as traditional oil paintings and ceramics. In 1975, he and his wife bought the art gallery, then one of Baltimore's oldest fine art dealers. He worked there daily until 1997 and owned the business at his death.

If you want to see paintings by Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, you don't have to visit the Baltimore Museum of Art. You can view works by those artists and many others at the new home of Renaissance Fine Arts in Pikesville. A "Masters" section is one of the many features of the gallery, which opened this fall at 1848 Reisterstown Road. There are also areas with contemporary art, sculpture, vintage posters and custom framing, and a separate boutique featuring jewel-encrusted frames and other art objects by Jay Strongwater.

Maryland-born artist Joseph Sheppard will soon have a permanent gallery in the state devoted to his paintings and sculptures. The University of Maryland University College has set Dec. 2 as the groundbreaking date for the Leroy Merritt Center for the Art of Joseph Sheppard, a $6 million, 5,500-square-foot gallery that is being added to the university's Inn and Conference Center in Adelphi. "This beautiful addition to our existing galleries will stand as an enduring tribute to Sheppard, a vibrant center for lifelong learning and a unique focal point for our acclaimed arts collection," said UMUC President Susan Aldridge.