Portrait

I almost dropped my coffee when I read that the sculptures in the new Johns Hopkins Hospital building make the old entrance look stuffy ("Johns Hopkins' new hospital sets transformative vision," June 9). Even if you are not a Christian, the marble statue of Jesus Christ can take your breath away with its beauty. And what could not be impressive about the portrait of the man who made all this possible? Obviously, the author of the article likes purple cows and green rhinos better.

Thanks very much and congratulations on Kevin Rector's very informative and sensitive article, "Girl charged in father's death struggled with mental health" (May 19). As educators and professional counselors, and as residents of the Mount Hebron area with children who graduated from the high school, we have been shocked at the news of Dennis Lane's murder. Your story provided valuable information about the complex issues that parents and educators deal with in relation to children and students who have developmental and mental health issues.

Until Saturday, the only pictures Angie Goode had of herself and her 1-year-old daughter, Armani McKinney, were self-portraits, taken by holding her cell phone out in front of her. But now she has two professionally done images free, courtesy of about 100 local photographers, hair and makeup stylists and other volunteers who invited the public in for free holiday photo session as a community gift. "This is wonderful. This is our first photo together," said Goode, 37, as she reviewed her favorite two shots with a photo editor at a long line of laptop computers in a large room at Charm City Church, at Frederick Avenue and Payson Street in Southwest Baltimore.

There is so much constant movement in our world that it takes an artist to translate some of that motion into a lasting image. In the aptly titled exhibit "Motion" at the Artists' Gallery in Columbia, painters Rana Geralis and Nancy Lee Davis encourage you to linger and look at the animals, people and cars that ordinarily don't slow down for inspection. This pairing of two artists is at its most concentrated in the side-by-side installation of two very small works that amount to portraits of individual animals: Columbia resident Geralis has a watercolor, "Paint Pony," and Clarksville resident Davis has an oil painting, "Cow Eating.

''Henry, the Portrait of a Serial Killer'' is said to be loosely based on the life of Henry Lee Lucas, who has been sentenced to death for several killings. He brags of more killings, some 150.John McNaughton did the film, one that was released without a rating after the MPAA mentioned something about giving it an NC-17.''Henry'' is well made, but why was it made? Who needs it? The film ranks down there with movies like ''In Cold Blood'' and ''Murder One,'' re-enactments of actual crimes.

A couple of years ago, Vernise Bolden took her son, Cameron, to get his portrait taken. After getting him dressed and trying to make him smile, Bolden ended up buying photos she didn't like "because we went through all that trouble." She knew she didn't want to do that again. But last week, Bolden threw caution to the wind and trekked to the Columbia JC Penney portrait studio. Four-year-old Cameron squirmed, and 2-month-old Jaelyn cried. Their dad, Wallace, behaved. "We know this is our last child," Vernise said, "and I wanted a nice family photo."

Parents and children, children and parents . . . the course of life inexorably reshapes this never-simple relationship, whose only constants are change -- and persistent attention from thoughtful artists."

The rosy-cheeked girl in the Peter Pan-collared pink dress and patent-leather Mary Jane shoes sits frozen in time, captured on canvas by a Baltimore County artist about four decades ago. But the identity of the little girl is a mystery, which the owner of the portrait now wants to unlock. Brooke Lynch hopes to return the painting to the girl, who sat in a Lutherville studio as his mother, artist Georgianna Sinclair Lynch, worked on her likeness. The odyssey of the portrait began when a parent contacted Lynch to commission a painting sometime around 1970.

With subjects who routinely avoid the spotlight, a reluctant artist who took the job out of friendship, and with little time for sittings, the project almost seemed as though it wasn't meant to be. But persistence paid off. After an unveiling ceremony, the portrait of Peter and Elizabeth Horowitz, Howard County philanthropists and art connoisseurs, greets visitors to the Howard Community College's visual and performing arts center that bears their name....

It's better late than never for Spiro T. Agnew, the former Maryland governor who resigned the vice presidency in disgrace.Mr. Agnew's portrait, relegated for years to a storage room, is moving to a place of honor -- courtesy of Gov. Parris N. Glendening.The governor said yesterday that he wants Mr. Agnew's visage to hang with those of other past governors in the State House Reception Room."I think warts and all, a person who serves ought to be there. People can look at it if they want and say, 'This was a disgrace,' but he was governor," said Mr. Glendening, a Democrat and political science professor.

For the past 158 years, art historians thought that the painter Richard Caton Woodville, the James Dean of his generation, had completed just 19 paintings before he died of a morphine overdose in 1855 at age 30. Now, we know that there were 20. Joy Heyrman, deputy director of development for the Walters Art Museum, recently learned about what very well may be first oil painting that the artist ever created. It's an 1844 portrait of a childhood friend, the surgeon and investigator Stedman R. Tilghman.

That's a relief. The last time a Travel Channel food show featured Baltimore, everyone was royally annoyed. But Andrew Zimmern's “Bizarre Foods America” show has a different agenda than Anthony Bourdain's “No Reservations,” which baked Baltimore into an unsavory “Rust-Belt” pie back in 2009. Baltimore came across better, and more accurately, on the Baltimore and Chesapeake Bay episode of “Bizarre Foods” that premiered on Monday. “Bizarre Foods” works so well because Zimmern is genuinely interested in what he's experiencing but also sensitive to a city's feelings.

Students from the public high schools in Howard County sure did their homework in preparing for "Artists Inspiring Artists: Self-Portraits" at the Columbia Art Center. That's because they studied the work of well-known artists and then used it as the source of inspiration for the exhibited self-portraits. The student artists have texts accompanying their artwork that explain their specific inspirational sources and also how they individually approach the creative process. Old Master painters from Europe inspired some of these young masters.

When Oprah Winfrey likes something, she makes no bones about letting the entire world know. Famous for being an ardent dog lover, the TV and magazine queen gave her blessing again this year for the art of a Howard County pet-portrait studio in the December issue of O the Oprah Magazine on her annual list of recommended gifts. Wagging Tail Portraits received Winfrey's nod for the second consecutive year, but with a twist: It was Natalie Kendall who created the digital art for the new line of greeting cards made from mom Sherry Kendall's hand-painted portraits, scoring the mother-daughter duo a shared spot on Oprah's Favorite Things 2012.

The National Portrait Gallery's new exhibition, “Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets,” uses portraiture, biography and verse to explore the people who created a distinctive, American voice. Walt Whitman's free verse in "Leaves of Grass," (1855), was a shocking departure from literary tradition, the museum notes -- both for its form and for the inclusion of topics that described ordinary life. (That mirrors the equally shocking mid-century shift to realism by painters such as Courbet in France.)

Charged as an adult in the Perry Hall High School shooting, 15-year-old Robert Wayne Gladden Jr., was held without bond Tuesday as a portrait of a withdrawn and occasionally bullied student with a troubled home life emerged through interviews with classmates and court documents. The suspect was charged with attempted murder and assault in the cafeteria shooting on Monday, the first day of classes. He underwent a mental health evaluation Tuesday, and had been held at the Baltimore County Detention Center.

After being buried in the state archives for 15 years, the portrait of former Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew returned yesterday to the State House he disgraced more than two decades ago.In an event that was more news conference than ceremony, Gov. Parris N. Glendening explained his controversial decision to restore the portrait to its chronological spot among those of Maryland's other 20th-century governors in the State House reception room.The purpose, Mr. Glendening said, was not so much to honor a former governor, "but to bring reason and a sense of history to this room."

Lalah Hathaway wanted crab cakes. So while the Los Angeles-based soul singer was in town recently doing promotional work, we got together for dinner at a friendly, down-home joint in Linthicum. The artist -- dressed casually in jeans and a clover-green top, dreadlocks framing her inviting smile -- was excited about Self Portrait, her new album in stores this week. The CD, Hathaway's debut on the revamped Stax label, is her most fully realized set to date. With her alluring amber tone and lyrical sensitivity, the daughter of tragic soul genius Donny Hathaway is one of the most distinctive vocalists of her generation.

It's our official national lie - the number of Americans we consider poor. Even as the U.S. Census Bureau prepares to report the highest level of poverty in 50 years, we are lying to ourselves about the number of Americans who can't make ends meet without government help or charity. The federal government, using a formula developed nearly 50 years ago, defines poverty as pretax annual income of $23,050 for a family of four, and $11,170 for a single person. Imagine living by those numbers.

I almost dropped my coffee when I read that the sculptures in the new Johns Hopkins Hospital building make the old entrance look stuffy ("Johns Hopkins' new hospital sets transformative vision," June 9). Even if you are not a Christian, the marble statue of Jesus Christ can take your breath away with its beauty. And what could not be impressive about the portrait of the man who made all this possible? Obviously, the author of the article likes purple cows and green rhinos better.