Art School

Artist Neilson M. Carlin sees a natural progression from his early interest in comic books to his current work reflecting the grand manner of the Renaissance painters. At 28, he creates somber, luminous oil paintings that appear to be the result of years of cogitation - their subjects sprung from old water-stained journals and notebooks. A partial list of subjects includes portraits of early presidents, biblical figures, Civil War soldiers, and colonial women in domestic settings.

When Bernie Tran was 10, his parents put him in a wooden fishing boat to escape from Vietnam. Accompanied by a family friend who abandoned him once on the boat, a frightened Tran and 79 others crammed into the 40-foot boat at Vung Tau and escaped to freedom. Next month, the soft-spoken 18-year-old will graduate from Radnor High School. In September, he will attend the Tyler School of Art on a partial scholarship, a result of his valor and tenacity. Tran, who received the Good Citizenship Award from the Union League last year, was one of 20 students, in a field of 90, chosen to receive an annual $1,000 Youth Scholarship Award from the league.

Greta Garbage and Baggy Grable, the two trashy ladies sauntering up Walnut Street behind the three singing cockroaches, were discussing art, fashion, the Earth and trash bags. From time to time, people would make remarks. "What are you supposed to be?" "Look at these people, will you. " "This town gets wackier every day. " Greta and Baggy, whose real names, respectively, are Lisa Stockebrand and Liz Dorbad, were on their way Monday to Rittenhouse Square with the singing cockroaches and two dozen other oddly attired people.

Stella Elkins was a lucky bride. For her spring wedding to George F. Tyler in 1905, her parents built her a cottage in their apple orchard in Elkins Park. A 50-room cottage. Named Georgian Terrace, it was designed by Horace Trumbauer, architect to Philadelphia's Gilded Age potentates. Mom and Dad - Stella and George Elkins - lived next door at Chelten House, a stone-and-timber estate also by Trumbauer. Grandfather William L. Elkins, a onetime grocer who smartly plowed his profits into oil, gasoline, streetcars, and railways, built an even more sublime Trumbauer creation, Elstowe Manor, just a robust croquet stroke away.

Woodmere Art Museum has brought another forgotten Philadelphia artist out of history's back closet, to her benefit and ours. If you haven't heard of Ethel V. Ashton (1896-1975), the exhibition's title, "Private Artist/Public Life," explains why. Ashton was a fixture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she was active for years in the Fellowship organization, which supports PAFA students and artists. She also was the school's librarian from 1957 until the early 1970s.

Leo Weisz has been involved in art since he was 6, helping design advertisements for his father's Philadelphia five-and-dime store. He's still creating art, and his favorite medium is watercolors - at age 102. "His secret to a long life is that he never worked. He loved what he did, so it was never work," Weisz's son, Howard, said of his father's accomplishments, including a lifelong career in illustration and advertising. For more than 40 years, Weisz was the art director for Acme Markets.

NEW YORK - In torn jeans and saddled with a black backpack, Andrew Witten glances up and down the street for police. He then whips out a black marker and scribbles "Zephyr" on a wall covered with movie posters. He admires his work for a few seconds before his tattooed arms reach for his daughter, holding her hand as he briskly walks away. Witten and a generation of urban latchkey kids who spray-painted their initials all over Manhattan in the 1970s and '80s and landed in the city's street-art scene are coming of age - middle age, that is. And like Witten, a 51-year-old single father, some street artists considered now to be graffiti elders are having trouble putting away their spray-paint cans.

Reporters are always asking Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast when they're going to collaborate. That's what happens when you're famous, married, and working in the same industry. Scher and Chwast are firm: Never. "It's not so much our lack of interest than it would break up our marriage," Chwast (pronounced Kwahst) tells me, because I can't resist asking, either. Later I ask Scher. "No," she says. "We can't collaborate. It's impossible. " Besides the relational politics, they work in different styles and on different scales.

Michael Petrie tried to go to art school twice in the 1970s, but frankly, he couldn't stand it. "I just couldn't get my head around the idea of going to art school to paint, while sitting in a room with a bunch of people and a dumb model," he says. Now 58, Petrie officially switched from art to horticulture years ago. But here's the interesting thing: He seems most comfortable at the curious intersection of trash and treasure, a place many gardeners - artists, too - find confusing and discomforting.

A popular Chester County teenager eager to begin his second year of art school died early Friday morning in a one-vehicle car crash. Oscar "Okie" G. Regalado, 19, of Kennett Square, one of two passengers in a 1999 Audi driven by Alexander B. Moore, 19, of West Chester, was taken by helicopter to Crosier Chester Medical Center, where he died of his injuries, police said Saturday. Moore and the other passenger, Justin P. Stearn, 19, of West Chester, sustained moderate injuries, police said.