Van Alstine

The summer sculpture show at C. Grimaldis gallery presents a half-dozen artists who have had solo exhibitions at the venue over the past two years and whose return as a group offers gallery patrons an opportunity to revisit some of the highlights of previous seasons. Grimaldis introduced Baltimoreans to German artist Annette Sauermann's luminous wall-relief sculptures in 2004, when her series of rectangular cast concrete blocks linked by thin, translucent sheets of white plastic film were first shown at the gallery.

The Richard Serra prints on view at Grimaldis, although they look much like his drawings currently at the Baltimore Museum of Art, have a completely different effect.The drawings come across as enormous physical presences rather than as images that can be "read" for meaning. The prints, on the other hand, have lots of content.That may be because they have a background. They are descended from a sculpture project in which Serra placed 18 upright basalt stones, three and four meters tall, on Videy Island near Reykjavik, Iceland.

The elements of landscape are so amenable to variations of treatment that it's not surprising they have been used by all manner of artists, from realists to abstract expressionists. This month the C. Grimaldis Gallery at 523 N. Charles St. has "Perceptual Painting: Landscape" (through July 27), bringing together a group of artists who use landscapes in differing ways, with differing results and differing degrees of success.Of the six painters represented, Wolf Kahn's quiet oils withtheir pastel-like colors may seem at first the most modest of all. But in Kahn there is a distillation of color and a depth of feeling thatpersist and expand in the consciousness.

A visit to Grimaldis' summer group show brings back the past with such a rush that it's almost like an exercise in escape. Not that we're talking nostalgia here; these artists are not that kind. But their works do recall other eras.Grace Hartigan, who often mines art history, gives us "Ask Me No More," a painting that features a hefty couple who might be a Venus and Adonis borrowed from Rubens. They face John Van Alstine's sculpture "Implement XXV (River Arc)," whose components include half of a stone mill wheel and a curving bronze element inspired by a scythe handle.

A Maryland appeals court overturned the lion's share of one of the largest legal judgments in state history yesterday, finding that First Union National Bank violated its contract with a Catonsville businessman but did not defraud him. The panel of Court of Special Appeals judges struck down $239 million of the $276 million jury award against the bank, now Wachovia Corp. The judges let the remaining damages stand after affirming the breach-of-contract judgment. It's a significant setback for software company owner Scott Steele, whose attorneys successfully argued in Baltimore Circuit Court last year that First Union double-crossed him after he sped up its loan approval process with a computerized system.

Unquestionably, the most important single development of the year on the local art scene was -- unfortunately -- the recession. It had been gaining on Baltimore before 1991, but this was the year it hit hard, with cutbacks in funds from public and private sources having major effects:* The Baltimore Museum of Art, its city funds cut more than 7 percent, will close for two weeks beginning Jan. 20, lay off six people and reduce its days open from six to...

EACH OF Dione Mahoney's Christmas ornaments conjures up memories when she takes them out of their protective wrapping each year, she says. That is not so unusual, until you hear about the transglobal adventures that some of those memories entail. Mahoney, a children's staff library associate at the branch in Savage, has been collecting Christmas ornaments from around the world for nearly 30 years. She usually hangs them on the family Christmas tree, but this year she is displaying them at the library instead.

After taking some blacksmithing classes about 25 years ago, Nick Vincent began forging iron in his backyard after work. In time, says Vincent, who was working full time at the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co., the forging became too much and about 16 years ago he decided that something had to go - either his job of 20 years or blacksmithing. Vincent chose to keep forging and never looked back. "I am my own boss, and I get to create things," the 55-year-old Uniontown man said. "I love working in front of the fire in the summer when it's 107 degrees outside.

To Phoebe Haddon, diversity is more than a buzzword or a proud achievement to be plastered on a brochure. It's an absolute key to the subject that makes her tick. Haddon, the new dean of the University of Maryland School of Law, loves to pick apart the history and meaning of our laws. Those conversations are far richer, she says, with input from the widest possible range of people. "I think women bring new dimensions to thinking about the law, because we ask different questions," says Haddon, a fourth-generation lawyer whose family has advocated for civil rights for more than a century.

Baltimore artist Christopher Myers recently created a public art installation in Baltimore consisting of 100 cast-concrete sculptures in the shape of Mad Dog brand wine bottles, each with a spent bullet from a handgun embedded in its base.Myers began placing his life-size bottles in various locations around the city July 31 with the intention of allowing them to be found by passers-by."Conceptually, these bottles are small votives to the city and its issues -- substance abuse, crime, murder, littering," said Myers.