Local Arts

Howard County government has been recognized with a national award for its support of local arts and cultural organizations. The national, nonprofit Americans for the Arts, with the National Association of Counties, chose Howard County to receive its Award for County Arts Leadership. The award was established to recognize the role county government leaders play in funding, improving and ensuring the accessibility of arts programs. Howard County has consistently ranked as one of the top three in Maryland for per capita spending on operating funds for the arts and for providing a stable source of funding and significant in-kind services for local arts groups, according to the award announcement.

A jazz musician, a county public school administrator and a devoted dance critic and enthusiast have been honored by the Howard County Arts Council for their contributions to the local arts scene.Winners of the 1998 "Howie Awards" are guitarist Damon Foreman, who was named Howard's Outstanding Artist; R. Barry Shauck, honored as Outstanding Arts Educator; and Carolyn Keleman, who was selected Outstanding Community Supporter of the Arts.The awards were presented last month at the second Celebration of the Arts held at Jim Rouse Theatre for the Performing Arts in Columbia.

An article last week in the Howard County edition of The Sun incorrectly stated that arts organizations in Baltimore supported by the Howard County Arts Council would receive funds raised by the Celebration of the Arts in Howard County gala. The money will benefit only county arts organizations.The Sun regrets the error.The first Celebration of the Arts in Howard County gala netted about $50,000 for local arts organizations and Columbia's Jim Rouse Theatre for the Performing Arts, organizers estimate.

Asking financially strapped suburbs for money is delicate stuff for city arts institutions. So when the folks from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra came calling to the Howard County Council this week, they brought more than a third-chair violinist.And so it was that the Howard council greeted Monday a certain high-profile lobbyist, William Donald Schaefer, the former governor and Baltimore mayor.Howard officials jokingly called him a "high-powered lobbyist." That drew from Mr. Schaefer what can only be called a loud scoff.

Some Howard County arts groups got all they requested from the Maryland Arts Council this year, which gave $170,000 in matching grants to county institutions. But in light of recent debates over the funding of federal arts programs, artists say they are wary about how much they will get in the future."It is unusual to have stable funding, especially in the atmosphere we're working in, where there are pressures on public funding for the arts, like with the National Endowment for the Arts," said Theresa Colvin, deputy director of the Howard County Arts Council.

Though the romantic view has it that artists and their organizations cheerfully subsist on shoe-string budgets with hardly a care for tomorrow, the reality is that theaters, symphony orchestras and museums are subject to the same hard fiscal realities that govern any large enterprise. They have to balance their books every year, repay their debts and maintain a credit rating. Most important, they have to manage their finances as carefully as any business in order for the arts to flourish.

Portland, Oregon -- Art accessible to everyone, destined to evoke smiles, has graced Portland's transit mall since it was built the late '70s.Who wouldn't like whimsical street sculptures reminiscent of the weather and fauna of the Pacific Northwest?Now, in the '90s, Portland is out front again, this time with an arts initiative fitting for the dawning era of competitive ''citistates.'' ''Arts Plan 2000+,'' born in 1990, is the nation's first regional cultural plan.The focus isn't simply on premier, downtown-based arts institutions such as the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

The Baltimore Community Foundation will provide $1 million to strengthen arts and cultural programs in Greater Baltimore, it announced yesterday at Center Stage to a gathering of corporate, political, education and arts leaders.The foundation's pledge is based upon the findings of a report on the state of local arts: "Building Community: The Arts & Baltimore Together," which was commissioned from Ernest L. Boyer, president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.The two-year study looks at how arts and culture improve and invigorate communities through such events as Artscape and such institutions as the Baltimore School for the Arts.

One year after the Baltimore Opera found itself teetering on the brink of insolvency, that venerable institution is back in the black -- financially and artistically. A fund-raising drive raised over $1 million to retire the opera's accumulated debts. Now the company is working to build an endowment that will help stabilize future production costs.The opera's turnaround can be credited largely to the energy of its director, Michael Harrison, and to generous support from area individuals, corporations and foundations.

The Baltimore Community Foundation will provide $1 million to strengthen arts and cultural programs in Greater Baltimore, it announced this week to a gathering of corporate, political, education and arts leaders.The foundation's pledge is based upon a report on the state of local arts: "Building Community: The Arts & Baltimore Together," which was written by Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The report calls for a regional effort to advance arts and cultural institutions.

The television industry has its Emmy, Broadway theater has its Tony and film has its Oscar, all awarded at ceremonies steeped in rivalry. Anne Arundel County has its Annie Award, bestowed on seven local arts contributors at a casual ceremony. In recent years this ceremony has been staged at Severn School's Price Auditorium, where local arts celebrities gather in camaraderie with their peers. At the 10th annual Annie Awards program, founding Arts Council member Cynthia McBride gave a brief history of how the award was designed, and the early decision to award Annies to a select few who had made lasting contributions to Anne Arundel arts.

After 10 years of performing The Nutcracker at Jim Rouse Theatre in Columbia, the Howard County Ballet is moving its popular holiday tradition to Reservoir High School. The price tag was too high and funding too scarce to use the Rouse Theatre this year, said the ballet's director, Kathi Ferguson. She also has cut back on staffing and looked for ways to reduce overhead, and plans a smaller dance concert than usual in the spring. Like many other segments of society, local arts organizations are feeling the squeeze of the tough economy.

The audience at the Howard County Arts Council's 11th Celebration of the Arts decided that the youngest competitor in the annual Rising Star competition was the most promising. When the patrons' votes were tallied Saturday night at Jim Rouse Theatre, 18-year-old pianist Alexander Francis took home the $5,000 first prize out of 10 performers at the gala fundraiser. Francis, a home-schooled high school senior who just moved with his family from Ellicott City to Sykesville, played a medley of pop, jazz and rhythm-and-blues songs he arranged.

The daughter of the late A. Aubrey Bodine, who became one of the country's best-known pictorial journalists during his 50-year career at The Sun, is protesting an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art that fails to include her father among photography's pioneering figures. Jennifer B. Bodine, of Denton on the Eastern Shore, where the photographer snapped many of his most famous images, appealed to BMA trustees last week to overrule a curator's decision not to show her father's work, arguing that "Bodine has earned his rightful place alongside [Alfred]

Howard County government has been recognized with a national award for its support of local arts and cultural organizations. The national, nonprofit Americans for the Arts, with the National Association of Counties, chose Howard County to receive its Award for County Arts Leadership. The award was established to recognize the role county government leaders play in funding, improving and ensuring the accessibility of arts programs. Howard County has consistently ranked as one of the top three in Maryland for per capita spending on operating funds for the arts and for providing a stable source of funding and significant in-kind services for local arts groups, according to the award announcement.

A group working to establish a performing arts center in Harford County took another step toward its goal by opening an office from which to run the effort. The office, which opened last week, is located in Hays-Heighe House, a historic home on the campus of Harford Community College. The group - a board of directors called the Center for the Visual and Performing Arts Inc. - is proposing a $40 million to $60 million facility that would include performing arts space, classrooms, restaurants and arts-related shops.

Where: The Top Floor, 5440 Harford Road When: 5 p.m.-11 p.m. Sunday Why: What better (and more inexpensive) way to brush up on the local arts and culture scene? Watch several indie films on a projection screen and see spoken word, folk and reggae performances. Information: 410-963-7907. Admission: $5.

Trademark on seal considered after firm uses county's name Prompted by a technology company's unauthorized use of the county's name, officials might register the Carroll County seal as a trademark. Subsurface Technologies Inc. of New Windsor advertised itself as a partner of the county in storm water management projects. A letter to its potential clients said the company "has teamed with the county to provide comprehensive" services. "It is incredibly inappropriate to imply any sort of relationship with us to get clients for their services," said Steven Powell, the commissioners' chief of staff.

Atreasure trove of more than 2,000 works by the late American painter Clyfford Still that has been stored unseen for nearly a quarter century in rural Maryland is being moved to Denver. The collection, which local arts boosters had hoped to one day display in Baltimore, will be housed in its own building as part of a $100 million expansion of the Denver Museum of Art, said Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. "We're not going to make this just another museum but a facility that will be worthy of the work that will be in it," Hickenlooper said yesterday.

The ability of the fine arts to lift the spirits was confirmed in September when - just two days after Tropical Storm Isabel swamped shops and buildings along Main Street in Annapolis - 27 painters arrived for Paint Annapolis 2003. Under sunny skies Sept. 20, the artists lined the streets of the state capital. And assisting was Cynthia McBride, an Annapolis gallery owner who has watched the local arts scene flourish since she opened her first Annapolis gallery in 1976. "In the summer of 1980, when we formed the Annapolis Gallery Association, we planned our first open house, offering refreshments and a map of our 10 galleries," McBride said.