Glass

Joyce Scott, whose trademark beaded sculptures often address painful issues of race, class and gender served up with a dollop of wry wit, is known for the uninhibited inventiveness of her art. Her new show at Goya Contemporary extends her beadwork ideas into the glass medium, marking a significant evolution in this prolific artist's career. Scott recently spent time at the Pilchuck Glass School in Tacoma, Wash., founded by celebrated glass artist Dale Chihuly. Working with master glassmakers, Scott created an entirely new body of work in blown, lampworked, painted and pressed glass that exploits the whimsical, fanciful qualities of the medium while challenging traditional distinctions between art and craft.

What holds it all when the beer starts to flow? If form holds, Super Bowl weekend will be beery. Sales of beer traditionally surge about 15 percent nationally in the two weeks leading up to kickoff, and the television commercials for beers are often more entertaining than the action on the field. As the nation's beer drinkers got ready to watch Sunday's contest between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts, I turned my attention to the vessels the imbibers are likely to be holding.

The mosaic and glass artwork and jewelry created by Anne Arundel Community College students and instructors, on exhibit on the Arnold campus, are well beyond any ordinary arts and crafts categorization. They are eye-popping revelations of the life-enhancing possibilities available through art studies at the college. Linda Elliott, who produced the remarkable mosaic art "Etruscan Urn," has been taking art classes at the college for years. She is contemplating retirement as an educational therapist and hopes to "devote more time to arty endeavors."

Late one night 30 years ago, Bob Brenner entered the Clarksville home he had just bought. It was the first time he had set foot in the house after dark. What he saw astounded him. "A full moon shown through the skylight," he remembered. "It was so bright I thought the lights were on. My shadow, and the shadows of things around me, was like nothing I'd ever seen before - long, like in sunlight." From then on, a sign has hung at the entrance to his Howard County property showing the home's name: Moonshadows.

Let me begin by emphasizing that I have nothing but respect for our friends in local TV news, who do a bang-up job bringing us breaking stories, weather and sports, along with the obligatory shocking videos of a bear jumping over the side of a bridge and a precocious 6-year-old taking the family sedan out for a spin. Oh, I'm hooked on all four stations. I love the palpable sense of excitement in the ABC2 News Storm Center when the forecast is dicey; the panoramic shots from WJZ's Sky Eye Chopper 13 piloted by Capt.

Chihuly exhibitFor the East Coast debut of the "Chihuly Baskets Blown-Glass Exhibition," travel to the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. Beginning tomorrow and running through June 20, you'll be able to view Seattle-based Dale Chihuly's room-size installation of 53 Native American Pilchuck baskets from his private collection, four drawings, and 48 blown-glass baskets from 1977 through 1994. Unlike the woven baskets that inspired them, Chihuly's baskets were created in many brilliant color combinations of translucent and transparent blown glass.

For years, the small treasures -- bits of colored glass held together by strips of lead -- sat unattended, propped against the wall of a Carroll County hayloft, above George F. Harne Sr.'s horses and cattle. Little by little, the stained-glass windows surrendered their gleam to an ugly crust of dirt and dust.Still, Harne -- who had rescued the windows from an abandoned church -- waited patiently for the day when sunlight would touch them again."We had to save the windows," said Harne. "I could not let them get away from us."

NEW YORK -- No fewer than 11 purveyors of stained glass exhibited their wares at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, but 10 of them could have saved themselves the bother of setting up on the South Side fairgrounds.Seekers of beauty hurried to a chapel-like room that had been designed by a brilliant, shrewd artist as a showplace for his transcendently beautiful stained-glass windows and intricate mosaics. It was a fantasy chamber that combined Romanesque and Byzantine styles, and it was filled with the kind of decorative objects -- candlesticks, vases, bowls and so on -- that a rising middle class was eager to acquire.

IT WAS AT Sunday's Ravens-Saints game at PSI Net Stadium, or whatever it's called, that I came to the stunning realization that I was now too poor to attend pro football games.This occurred to me after I paid $10 to park and was sitting in my $60 seat, sipping a $5 beer and eating a $4.75 hot dog.Here it was, still a full 30 minutes to kickoff, and I was already out 80 bucks.At this rate, I'd be needing to see a loan officer by the second quarter.In fact, if the price of food and drink at the concession stands gets any higher, they'll start locking the stuff away in glass cases, like in jewelry stores.

To make a bottle, sometimes you've got to break some glass.No one, it seems, cracks more glass for more new bottles than Partners Quality Recycling Services Inc., a Rosedale company that trains its electric eyes on ton after ton of arrowhead-size glass nuggets, sorting the scraps that otherwise would have ended up in a landfill.Since the dawn of the recycling era, haulers who pick up the beer and juice bottles left near curbs have been asked to handle those blue bags with care. A mixed bag of brown, green and clear slivers could not be efficiently separated by color, so it held no worth.

I think I'm pretty safe in saying that sangria is the hottest cool drink of summer 2009. You can't exactly call this fruity wine punch trendy - it's been around too long - but it goes perfectly with the foods that are trendy right now. That means every Latino restaurant and tapas bar in the area is offering its variation on the red wine and fruit juice theme. (Not to mention non-Latino cafes and wine bars.) No other mixed drink that I can think of can be made so many different ways. These days you can use red, white or sparkling wine.

In its long history, St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic Church in downtown Baltimore has seen its share of saints, sinners and Baltimore weather. The first two have been easier to accommodate than the third, which has taken its toll on the church. A costly renovation is under way to make amends. A few days ago, workers climbed scaffolding and removed two fragile stained-glass windows from the church's nave, a step in the restoration of the 1845 building renowned for its lavish Gothic Revival interior, high altar and no fewer than 84 saint statues.

When Gregory Glass and his colleagues set out to trap rats in Baltimore neighborhoods for a recent study, they were welcomed by two-legged residents who were more than happy for the scurrying rodents to be taken away to a lab. They had just one concern. "You're not bringing them back here when you're done, are you?" they asked. No, after their DNA was extracted, all 277 rats collected in 11 alleys were killed, which is a good thing, given that what Glass learned was that death is among the few things that will get a Baltimore rat to leave the place it calls home.

It is easy to overlook the stunning black lacquer piano just inside the marble-tiled entrance of Bill Magruder and Stanley Scherr's Mount Washington home. Only a focused eye would spy anything other than the spectacular wall of glass just beyond the foyer. "The windows and the brightness sold me on the house," said Scherr, 59, a teen outreach worker. No denying either of those features. In the cathedral-ceilinged living room (a step up from the foyer), the entire back wall is a window looking out onto a wrought-iron and glass-furnished patio where a perfectly manicured lawn - including sea grass - surrounds a 32-foot by 14-foot heated, saltwater pool.

Friends held a yard sale and told me their Waterford glass salad plates attracted no buyers. The pickers who showed up early that Saturday wanted vintage musical recordings. Record fever overcame me the other Saturday when I wandered into a Charles Street retro vinyl store. I thought the 1960s had returned. The allure of old music, its sound and packaging, is easy to appreciate. Old record players have cool dials and knobs. A distinct smell from all that plastic fills the air. The album cover art was designed to sell.

They had me at the name: Catches Restaurant, Grill and Wine Bar in Middle River. The karaoke was just a bonus. After getting a couple of e-mails urging me to try this relatively new place (described as a "hidden jewel" by the last one), I decided it might be a restaurant that deserved area-wide attention. Sometimes reviewers really do find places worth the trip; other times it doesn't make much sense to criticize a restaurant when the most you can say for it is that it serves its purpose in the neighborhood.

WASHINGTON - The Star-Spangled Banner has a snazzy new home - and it's already the talk of the town. When the National Museum of American History reopens tomorrow after a two-year, $85 million renovation, visitors will finally get a glimpse at what museum officials are calling a "dramatic transformation" of the 44-year-old building. The most stunning evidence of this is a five-story-high, skylit atrium that greets museumgoers as they enter from the National Mall. The airy lobby is dominated by a large steel structure in the shape of a waving flag, consisting of 960 reflective tiles, and a wide, futuristic-looking glass staircase that updates the museum's core.

With this year's holiday season coinciding with increasing worries by consumers about the state of the economy, many people are beginning to get a bit more creative with their gift-giving habits. They are forgoing high-priced gadgets in favor of something more heartfelt. But even though it's the thought that counts when it comes to gift-giving, coming up with a good gift idea still can be difficult. A couple of local glass blowers offer some ideas. Corradetti Glass Studio and Gallery and McFadden Art Glass say art fans of every skill level can make their own tree ornaments and holiday decorations for giving (or keeping)

Can the Brewer's Art crew do wrong? Doesn't look like it. Last year, former Brewer's Art manager Kurt X. Bragunier opened Annabel Lee Tavern in Canton. In a matter of months, he made the Edgar Allan Poe-centric corner bar into a cozy destination for dining and drinks. Last month, Brewer's Art co-owner Tom Creegan helped open the stellar Hamilton Tavern on Harford Road. He owns the building, and his wife, local jazz singer Felicia Carter, co-owns the business. Though the year isn't over yet, I know the Hamilton Tavern will be on my list of 2008's best new bars.

Sunshine enters the back windows of Viki Keating's Riva home and penetrates an assemblage of colored glass. As light is refracted from every angle, Keating thinks back to her childhood. She wanted to be an artist for as long as she can remember. In high school, she used her artistic flair as a floral arranger, and after graduating from an Indiana art institute, she worked mostly with paints and ceramics. But it was an art class in 1980 that introduced Keating to her true calling: glass.