Gallery

Ellen Burchenal's exhibit of recent paintings and works on paper at the C. Grimaldis Gallery's Charles Street location continues her exploration of two concerns: how volumetric forms can also seem nearly organic, and how those shapes can nearly seem three-dimensional against the flat surface.Her new work shows career development, though, because she is now expressing herself more freely in the assertiveness of her colors and their application. Likewise her interest in layering fields of color now seems more emotional, as in her painting "Cloud (Blue & Orange)

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.

Luna Paris is the creative persona of Lauren Unger, an American performance artist and painter living in Paris whose abstract-figurative canvases, on view at Gomez Gallery through March 15, address issues of the body. Unger describes her work as allegory, though in works like Radiation any one-to-one correspondence between image and meaning seems far too restrictive; these works are pictorial mysteries that suggest far more ample readings. Also at Gomez are Argentine artist Sergio Roggerone's paintings inspired by Renaissance icons and the religious folk art of his native country.

At the end of the year, Katzenstein Gallery on Pratt Street wil become the latest downtown gallery to suspend regular art shows, owner Stanley Katzenstein said this week.The art and framing gallery, which also has a Lutherville location, will remain open at 729 E. Pratt St., but without the regular, curated monthly shows inaugurated with the move to the present location six years ago.Like other gallery owners, Mr. Katzenstein blamed the economy for his decision."It was financially draining" to do shows, he said.

The space is huge, about 130 feet long and 50 feet wide. The four artists have walled-off studios within the space, and it's still big enough to make many a long-established gallery envious.But Isospin Two South can't be called long-established. It opened this fall as an alternative space run by four artists in their 20s, two students and two recent graduates of the Maryland Institute College of Art. As Christy Taylor, one of the four, puts it, "We're completely learning."Ms. Taylor, Christy M. Taylor (another person with the same name)

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.

REBECCA WEBER, owner of Sheppard Art Gallery in Ellicott City, has a clear sense of cultural purpose. Like any businessperson, Weber must make sales to remain in operation. The gallery's framing business ensures that Sheppard is a profitable venture, but sales are not Weber's primary motivation. "My goal is to help people learn to appreciate art," Weber said. "If someone comes in and just looks for half an hour, that means more to me than making a sale." For Weber, Sheppard has assumed even greater significance in recent years after the closing of the only downtown theater and the burning of Blues Alley in November.

As of yesterday afternoon, they had painted the walls, but they hadn't even started hanging the first show. Nevertheless, they insist that at 7 this evening they will definitely open the H. Lewis Gallery to the public. And, after what they've done so far, who's to say they won't?They are a group of nine undergraduates at the Maryland Institute, College of Art -- sophomores, juniors and seniors, average age 21 -- and they're opening an art gallery in Bolton Hill. It's going to show student work (including theirs)

Marion S. Harwood, co-owner of a Baltimore art gallery and longtime volunteer, died of cardiac arrest Sunday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 84 and had lived in Elkridge Estates since moving from her Roland Park home in 1986. Born Marion Smith in Baltimore and raised in Homeland, she was a graduate of Eastern High School and earned a bachelor's degree in 1942 from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Mrs. Harwood worked for several years in the bacteriology laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital before her 1946 marriage to Richard R. Harwood Jr. In 1975, the couple purchased the Purnell Gallery in the 400 block of N. Charles St. Her husband, a former printing company executive, is president of the family business -- now in Hampden's Mill Center -- and Mrs. Harwood was vice president.

With its collection of some 2 million vintage and contemporary photographs, the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County is one of the underappreciated cultural gems of the region. The Kuhn gallery has been collecting photographs since the 1970s, when chief curator Tom Beck negotiated the purchase of a superb portfolio of Depression-era images by Walker Evans and a major collection of documentary photography by Lewis Hine, the early 20th- century crusader for child-labor legislation.