Portrait

Salary: $65,000 Age: 45 Years on the job : 26 How she got started: At an early age, Shreve knew she wanted to be an artist. Having grown up on a farm, she enjoyed painting and drawing animals. When she was 10 her mother bought her a watercolor set, which she used to paint the wildlife around her. By 11 years old, she was being commissioned to do work and at the age of 14 she was selling paintings for $400. While taking a zoology class at Towson University, she went on a 30-day foot safari in Africa.

Last spring, Juliana Biondo was a high school junior, merely learning about art. But this fall, she has gone from student to teacher. The 17-year-old is one of the first high school students chosen to co-curate an exhibit at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, a portrait show that explores themes of race, class and identity over the centuries. One of 12 students chosen to collaborate on the exhibit with a renowned Chicago photographer, Dawoud Bey, Biondo had a hand in selecting the drawings, paintings and photographs that will be displayed during the two-month run of Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project, which begins Saturday.

In the 1950s and '60s, American Jews and blacks had two glorious, complex and sometimes-fractious partnerships: civil rights and recording rights. Writer-director Darnell Martin goes for the throat of this killer subject in the scintillating Cadillac Records. Adrien Brody plays Leonard Chess, the Jewish founder of Chess Records who made the Cadillac his label's car of choice. In the 1950s, he put Muddy Waters and then Chuck Berry on the nation's turntables, and paid Alan Freed and other DJs to put them on the air. Thus did Chess, Waters, Berry and Freed invent rock 'n' roll.

All the other players were wet and muddy by the time Zachary "Z-Man" Morris got into the game. It was a playoff between the Stembridge Colts and the Middle River Renegades in the 11-13 age division of the huge Harford/Baltimore County Youth Football League. It had rained heavily, and his teammates and opponents were wearing warrior mud when the Z-man's coach ordered him onto the field at Stemmers Run Middle School. From the sideline, Dennis Martinez, the Stembridge football commissioner, noticed the boy with the clean uniform and the slow, awkward running style.

Bulls@Trail Blazers 10:30 p.m. [ESPN] So here's the thing about Greg Oden (right): Maybe it's a reverse Dorian Gray kind of deal. Somewhere, there is a portrait of Oden in which he looks about 19. And there is probably a similar picture of LeBron James right next to it.

FREDERICK - In the days since Bruce Ivins committed suicide, federal authorities have portrayed him as a mentally ill man who had threatened to kill a social worker and was responsible for the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001. Yesterday, as about 250 friends, relatives and colleagues filled the dark wooden pews at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick, a very different portrait of the Army scientist emerged. Ivins, 62, was remembered during the memorial service as a talkative man who liked to understand how everything around him worked.

The National Portrait Gallery in downtown Washington has definitely changed since its reopening in 2006. The formerly staid cultural fixture has moved into the 21st century with exhibits such as Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture, which explores the world of hip-hop. The multimedia display is a far cry from the gallery's permanent portrait collection of U.S. presidents and military figures. This exhibit includes images of LL Cool J and Ice T; videos with urban themes; an installation that combines sculpture with poetry; and colorful graffiti, a pillar of hip-hop along with DJs, emcees and break dancing.

Gov. Martin O'Malley sat in the audience last week as the portrait of his once and perhaps future adversary, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., was unveiled. Some have said these two young lions of Maryland politics are antagonistic twins destined for more rounds of political combat. However, their wives, Kendel Ehrlich and Katie Curran O'Malley - as if signaling some kind of sartorial truce - came to the event in essentially the same dress. The emcee, Edward T. Norris, is a convicted felon and talk-show host who, before his conviction, had been head of the Baltimore police for Mr. O'Malley and then superintendent of the state police for Mr. Ehrlich.

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.

The two first ladies wore nearly identical dresses, and that wasn't the most awkward moment. The dress incident happened last night at the unveiling of the portraits of former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and first lady Kendel Ehrlich - a time-honored tradition in Annapolis. Such events can take on the tenor of officialdom, a passing of batons between administrations, but usually they don't involve rival politicians widely viewed to be headed for a rematch. This year's event took on the tenor of a political rally for Ehrlich, as the current governor, Martin O'Malley, watched from the front row. "It's a Kodak moment, that's for sure," said Kevin Kelly, an Allegany County Democrat who broke ranks in 2006 and endorsed Ehrlich.