Mount Royal

When artists turn their brains, eyes and palettes toward food, interesting things happen. What they serve up is usually not standard fare, but it can be intriguing, a different way to look at eating. I say this as Artscape, the city's annual sweltering carnival of music, street food, crafts and art, is about to begin. I can't avoid Artscape. I live a few blocks away, close enough to run over and grab a sandwich, or roasted vegetables on a stick. In search of supper, I usually happen upon some culture, perhaps catching a glimpse of pieces of sculpture set up in the median of Mount Royal Avenue.

Arthur B. Jenkins Jr., a trumpet player and music teacher at Polytechnic Institute, died Friday of a heart attack at his Monastery Avenue home. He was 55.Mr. Jenkins influenced students by teaching them to employ music as an academic discipline and becoming a steadying influence in their lives."He was teaching his third generation of students," said Jan Levin, an employee of Shubert Music Co. in Pikesville, where Mr. Jenkins taught trumpet. "He produced a legacy of students who are coming in, buying music, favors and batons to put in his coffin."

An Aberdeen man was arrested and charged yesterday with first-degree murder and assault in the death of a man found lying outside a convenience store last month.Jeremiah Kirkland, 19, of the 100 block of S. Deen Ave. was arrested by Aberdeen Police Detective Donald Licato and charged with killing Stephen Eugene Heintz, 30, of Mount Royal Avenue in Aberdeen.Kirkland is being held at the Harford County Processing Center pending a bail hearing today in District Court.Heintz's body was found March 7 next to a trash container in the parking lot of a convenience store at West Belair and Mount Royal avenues.

The Arizona and New York state flags that fly on the front of Sharon Zorella's and Mike Garrett's newly renovated rowhouse on Lennox Street are more than mere decoration. They are reminders of a suburban lifestyle that both have left behind for city living.It's a move neither of them regret."I was Mr. Suburbs most of my life," Garrett said. "Living here in the city is exactly where I want to be."While many continue to move out of the city, Garrett and Zorella have gone in the opposite direction.

Stan Smith removes his Omega watch and billfold, the last of his valuables. The alarm system is activated. Only then does he venture beyond his rowhouse, avoiding alleys and strangers, for a pleasant evening jog on the streets of Bolton Hill.It's not like it used to be when the 54-year-old high school teacher grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, where front doors were left unlocked. "It's more of a comment on society as a whole," he said. "It's not only in the city."Smith and others in his neighborhood thought their fears would be allayed when they agreed two years ago to pay a surcharge tax for the creation of the Midtown Community Benefits District, carved in the heart of Baltimore to address issues of grime and crime.

Artscape tries to do better every year. "We try to open more spaces to art and get more art into them," says Gary Kachadourian, Artscape's visual arts coordinator.So this year, he's come up with the idea of "10 Viewing Stations," art shown in portable boxes modeled on, of all things, the Spot-a-Pot portable outdoor toilets seen every year at Artscape.Ideas come from anyplace. Of the idea for the boxes, Kachadourian says, "It came partly from watching Spot-a-Pots arrive and seeing how fast they could be put in position."

Fred Lazarus became president of the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1978, and to mark his 20th anniversary, there will be a number of celebratory events this academic year. None could be more appropriate than the current "20/XX," an exhibit of works by 20 alumni who have graduated since 1978 (actually 19, as one artist's proposal couldn't be accommodated for space and financial reasons).Of all the components of an educational institution, from buildings to faculty to students, none indicates its worth so well as its alumni.

For the second summer in a row, antiques thefts have vexed the 1900 block of Mount Royal Terrace -- a city street of Victorian-vintage painted brick houses built in 1884.Paul Hartzell climbed his roof last week looking for squirrel nests, only to discover that the original wrought ironwork decorating the top of his three-story house was gone."I saw they just snapped it off. Nobody stole this in 112, 114 years," said Hartzell, 57, a Department of Natural Resources engineer who has lived in his home -- complete with gas lamps, servant call bells and stained-glass windows -- for 26 years.

To look at Fay Chandler's work is to sense that you'd like her in person. Some of her drawings, paintings and small sculpture now on view at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, are funny, and some are more serious; but even the most serious are unfailingly good-humored.Chandler is currently the star of "Fay and Friends: Fells Point Gallery Revisited" at the Institute's Mount Royal Station gallery. In 1969, two years after graduating from the institute, she and others founded the Fells Point Gallery to show the work of institute alumni and faculty.

Every year several artists take sabbatical leaves from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, and when they come back the school gives them a show to let people see how they've used the time.This year's show should draw considerable interest, for a number of its artists are well known for their past work: Phil Koch for his realist paintings -- this time he will include works from the Jones Falls valley and at Edward Hopper's Cape Cod studio; Jan Pierce Stinchcomb for her assemblages and her environmental concerns; painter Dan Dudrow for his stylized figures, which can look both ancient and modern; Jann Rosen-Queralt, who has been known for installation work but who has also created prints recently.

SUNDAY ANTIQUE FLEA MARKET: It's in with the old at the Antique Flea Market in Fells Point's Broadway Market Square, 800 S.Broadway. From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., approximately 50 vendors showcase and sell antique items. This free event is held by the Fells Point Preservation Society. Call 410-675-6750 or go to preservationsociety.com. FOODSCAPE OPENING: Once again, Mount Royal Tavern, 1204 W. Mount Royal Ave., hosts the opening of the long-running Artscape alternative, Foodscape. From 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., schmooze with the unconventional artists behind the show's various food-themed works.

The date on the highway bridge over the Jones Falls said 1961, a year that is as good as any to pin an age on the expressway that runs from downtown to the Beltway. A few weeks ago an old friend, June Goldfield, posed a basic question: What is the history of the almighty Jones Falls Expressway? The expressway is a mostly elevated automobile highway that more or less took off where the old Fallsway ended. The Fallsway was the public works darling of Mayor James H. Preston. It was a piece of engineering infrastructure that channeled and covered over the Jones Falls watercourse with an elevated highway in much of downtown, thus putting an end to deadly overflows.

A "nerve center" pulsating with activity. A series of chambers that spiral outward like the shell of a nautilus. A shimmering glass mountain that derives its shape from the waterway below. Those are a few of the concepts that architects have proposed for the design of a $107 million law school the University of Baltimore intends to build by 2012, with funding assistance from Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos. University leaders will hold a news conference tomorrow to announce the winner of an international competition held this fall to select an architect for the John and Frances Angelos Law Center.

University of Baltimore and Maryland Institute College of Art officials are focusing attention and money on the areas adjacent to Baltimore's Penn Station with a goal of wresting a more attractive and recognizable neighborhood from parking lots and random, underused spaces. They have identified a spine along Mount Royal Avenue, from North Avenue to Calvert Street, as a unifying corridor the two educational institutions can enhance. They are thinking beyond trees and new curbs to apartments and shops, a joint student-community recreation center and, in their distant dreams, a soccer field above the Jones Falls Expressway.

The drum-shaped building near the intersection of North and Mount Royal avenues has a large opening on its west side that allows people on the sidewalk to look up and see a landscaped courtyard deep inside, two levels above the street. It has a horizontal opening on the south side that looks like a giant mail slot. The glass panes around the exterior aren't always in the same plane from floor to floor and change in color as one moves around the building. Did the contractor run out of the same color glass and decide to improvise partway through construction?

Anyone who doubts Baltimore's architectural landscape is leaping into the 21st century needs look no further than the Maryland Institute College of Art's stunning new Gateway building at North and Mount Royal avenues. The drum-shaped dorm and student activity center astride the Jones Falls Expressway has turned heads for months as workers put the final touches on its gleaming glass and steel exterior. When it opens Aug. 24, it will mark the northern anchor of MICA's campus and the newest addition to a local skyline that is winning Baltimore national renown for innovative design.

The parking lot at the northeast corner of Charles Street and Mount Royal Avenue is due to become the University of Baltimore's new law school building. Attorney and Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos has made a major gift to the school, and the Abell Foundation is backing an architectural competition for the very visible downtown crossroads. I can recall when this corner was not a parking lot but contained shops and businesses, all of which were far from glamorous. They were part of the fabric of the upper Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood and were handy little parts of city living.

Note: Events free. Other events take place on and off site. Go to artscape.org for more information. Music Main Stage: 1400 Cathedral St. at Mount Royal Avenue / National, international and regional artists. *4 p.m. tomorrow: Mia Miata, soul *5:30 p.m. tomorrow: Groove Stu, neo-soul *8:30 p.m. tomorro w: Roberta Flack, soul *1 p.m. Saturday: Reverb, a cappella *2 p.m. Saturday: Kia Heath, R&B *3:30 p.m. Saturday: JSoul, R&B *5 p.m. Saturday: Rye-Rye, DJ Class and K-Swift, hip-hop *7 p.m. Saturday: Mario, R&B *8:30 p.m. Saturday: Dru Hill, R&B *1 p.m. Sunday: 3 the Hard Way, roots *3 p.m. Sunday: See I, roots/reggae *4:30 p.m. Sunday: SOJA, reggae *6:30 p.m. Sunday: The Wailers, reggae Saturn Stage: Mount Royal Avenue (near Mosher Street)

Numerous streets near the Maryland Institute College of Art will be closed as workers prepare for the Artscape celebration that begins Friday, according to the city's Department of Transportation. Dolphin Street between Mount Royal Avenue and Howard Street closed on Friday and will remain shut to traffic through 5 p.m. July 22. Starting 7 a.m. today through July 22, these streets will be off-limits to traffic: * The northside and southside curb lanes of Mount Royal Avenue from North to Maryland avenues.

Artscape expands and becomes a little "greener" this year. But the 27-year-old arts festival, the largest, free public event of its kind in the country, maintains a flavorful and eclectic musical lineup. In a news conference at Penn Station yesterday, Mayor Sheila Dixon announced the new additions and musical lineup for this year's Artscape, set for July 18-20. The marquee names on the Main Stage, at Mount Royal Avenue and Cathedral Street, include Grammy-winning R&B sensation Ne-Yo, reggae legends the Wailers, rock veterans Joan Jett & the Black Hearts and the alt-rock band Rusted Root.