Painters

In an era of profound upheaval, the Color Field painters of the 1960s - artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and others - remained oddly detached from the great issues of their day. So writes curator Karen Wilkin in the brochure accompanying Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975, a lovely exhibition that opened last week at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. "For anyone who believes that political currency is a necessary component of works of art," Wilkins writes, "it may be surprising to realize that the Color Field painters were at work during the years marked by the burgeoning women's movement, nascent gay rights activism, an escalating civil rights movement, and growing resistance to the Vietnam War, among other notable events."

The Copy Cat building might be the only place in the city where a professional dancing banana could feel at home. In one apartment, a tire swing dangles between a drum set and a bar. In another, food salvaged from garbage bins fills the refrigerator and a bottle of turquoise hair dye sits in the bathroom. Everywhere you look in the former factory in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District there are interesting things -- an old wheelchair, a maze of hand-built walls, an orange cat named Fettuccine -- and countless works of art. "I consider it my own personal playground," says Carabella Sands, 21, the dancing banana in question, who retreats there after a long day luring customers to a Timonium smoothie stand.

The walls of her Gambrills home are filled with paintings of barns, churches, historic landmarks and old houses from across the state. For more than two decades, Mildred Bottner Anderson visited those sites, sometimes taking photographs that she brought back to her studio and used to paint watercolor renderings. Other times she painted on location. In many cases, the places depicted in her artwork were at risk of being demolished, she said. Anderson said she felt a duty to preserve them in the paintings.

Making your own CDs and DVDs with a computer is old news. Making them look as good as the ones you buy is another story. First we used markers to label what's on a disc. Then came the CD label. These are first inserted into a printer and then stuck onto the disc. But if you don't center them exactly, you wind up with a lopsided mess that can cause the disc to malfunction as it spins. Plus it just looks bad. More recently, some printer models have appeared that let you print directly onto the disc using CDs and DVDs that have a printable surface.

Robert Barber of State College, Pa., will be walking around downtown Annapolis today with no touristy, leisurely gait. He'll be staking out an outdoor scene worthy of the top prize in the sixth annual Paint Annapolis competition. The artist, who has won the competition three years in a row, does not think it will be hard to find. "The thing that I enjoy about painting in Annapolis is that every block has 12 paintings in it," Barber said. The Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association will host the competition from tomorrow through Sunday in Annapolis.

Growing up in pre-World War II Italy, Corrado DePinto simulated an oil painting. Unable to afford oil paints, the 8-year-old mixed his watercolors with olive oil. He used the concoction to paint his first seascape, a rendering he created on a piece of cardboard that he tore out of a shoebox lid. "I made the paint like a salad," recalled DePinto, 75, of Bel Air. "And it worked. I was flabbergasted with the finished painting. I was so proud of it." The painting remained with him throughout the war and was one of a few belongings he brought with him when he came to the United States in 1974.

Donald D. Duncan, a longtime city planner who was an instrumental behind-the-scenes player in Inner Harbor renewal, died of brain cancer Tuesday at his home in Sedona, Ariz. He was 73. In 1967, he and two other graduate students at Cornell University had devised a master's thesis that concentrated on Baltimore, including a revitalization focus centered on the Inner Harbor. He was immediately hired by Baltimore's legendary Planning Director Larry Reich when he graduated with a master's degree in urban planning in 1967.

Avgerinos "Paul" Mavrophilipos, a retired painter who had owned a bar and restaurant, died of congestive heart failure June 25 at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Towson resident was 87. Born on the island of Ikaria, Greece, he left home at the age of 14 to find work and send money back to his family. He became a merchant marine seaman before World War II. Family members said he told of narrowly escaping the German U-boat sinkings of merchant marine vessels in ship convoys between Canada and England.

In her studio at Mill Centre, Charlene Clark talks about her paintings and the people she's painted and those who look at them. Among other things, she's a kind of personal historian for residents of Baltimore and Ocean City and lots of the rest of Maryland. She paints the places that live in their memories. "They're always telling me stories," Clark says. "Constantly." "One year at Artscape a man pointed to my Edmondson Drive-In painting and yelled, `I lost my virginity there.' " The Edmondson Drive-In is gone now. Indeed, lots of the scenes captured by Clark have passed.