Gallery

After weeks of a surprisingly bitter dispute between the city and the Friends of School 33 Art Center over $200,000 earmarked for the city-owned gallery, the outlines of a compromise may be in sight. However, making any deal stick will still require more patience - and trust - than either side has shown so far. The problems between the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and the Friends of School 33, the gallery's board, first surfaced in August, when the city agency hired Jan Angevine to replace Peter Dubeau as gallery director.

It goes way beyond understatement to say this place is somewhat different from most art galleries. Hugh Harrell's gallery on Auchentoroly Terrace is as far away in look and spirit from the fancy downtown galleries as a lively, working Paris atelier is from the IBM building.Here there are no stark and sterile white walls, no polished wood floors, no eyeball spotlights on slightly disembodied works of art. No manicured and suited sales associates whisper, "May I help you?"Instead Hugh Harrell himself gets up from whatever he's working on, opens the door and says, "Come on in."

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.

COLORFUL watercolors of Mediterranean townscapes will grace the walls of Slayton House Gallery tomorrow. The gallery, in Wilde Lake Village Center, is open for the first time after six months of renovations. New landscaping and new windows and doors have been installed, and the gallery has a new lighting and hanging system, said director Bernice Kish. "It's exciting that the reopening exhibit is by a Wilde Lake resident who is one of the pioneers of Columbia," she said. The watercolor artist, Robert Tennenbaum, is an architect and a city planner.

In the spring of 1990, local photographers Tom Guidera III and J. Brough Schamp set up a vintage 1940s camera -- the kind with the heavy black cloth you set up on a tripod -- in Fells Point, Federal Hill, Druid Hill Park and in front of the old post office building on Calvert Street. They proceeded to take 150 pictures of any passersby who would agree to pose against a white backdrop.The result of their efforts, "Baltimore Portrait," will have an opening preview exhibition Wednesday from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Artshowcase Gallery, 336 N. Charles St. The opening preview will benefit the Door, the private inner-city social services organization founded and directed by the Rev. Joe Ehrmann, the former Baltimore Colts defensive lineman.

Summer is often a time for surprises on the Baltimore art scene, and the lively, two-for-one sculpture show organized this month by C. Grimaldis Gallery doesn't disappoint. The exhibition appears simultaneously in two different venues, something not usually seen outside Artscape, the city's annual outdoor arts festival that opens July 18. The downtown venue features modestly scaled pieces at Grimaldis' own gallery on North Charles Street. The off-site venue, in the cavernous loft at Area 405, a century-old factory building on East Oliver Street that was recently purchased by artists, houses the kind of giant, monumentally scaled works that bespeak big spaces and even bigger ambitions.

Quiet Waters is not the only park in Anne Arundel County with an artgallery.Severna Park has at least two: the 6-year-old Benfield Frame Art Gallery on Jumpers Hole Road, and now Art in the Park.Open seven days a week since May 26 in the Park Plaza Shopping Center, the gallery is run by area residents Christina Mahrer and her mother, Shirley Hubbard.It offers a selection of jewelry, pottery,hand-painted furniture, original paintings and sculptures from about40 regional, local, national and international artists.

In an effort to promote local arts, the Howard County Arts Council will be the host of its annual Road to the Arts tour of county art galleries, beginning tomorrow and continuing Saturday.The tour, in its ninth year, is part of a continuing effort by the council to raise the visibility of the arts throughout Howard County. The event also marks the official opening of the fall gallery season in Howard, said Stephanie Guerin, program center coordinator of the arts council."This tour is designed to draw attention to the galleries throughout the county, as well as the work of local artists," Guerin said.

Often compared to London's fashionable Bond Street, Maryland Avenue in downtown Annapolis got even better with Saturday's grand opening of Gallery Third Millennium Designs. Along the first block of this historic street leading from State Circle, a restaurant offering live classical jazz and a distinctive array of established galleries featuring excellent traditional art provide an appealing ambience. Now Maryland Avenue also offers a splash of contemporary art. Michael Allen, the owner of Gallery Third Millennium, hopes his business can add more diversity to the art district.

People are so fascinated by Jan Van Bibber's paintings of stormy landscapes that they often purchase them before the works reach the gallery. Now, after a full summer of painting, a number of her works will be on exhibit from Sept. 27 through Oct. 22.2 Information: Mary Landon, president, 239-1977.Giving blood as good as goldWhat doesn't cost a penny but is worth more than gold?Giving blood doesn't cost anything except a few minutes of time. And for someone who needs blood to live, there's no substitute.