Engraving

"The Engravings of Giorgio Ghisi," an exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and featuring 58 of the artist's 63 prints, comes to UCLA's Grunwald Gallery Tuesday through Nov. 3. The exhibition presents the work of a 16th-Century Italian engraver noted for making prints after Italian paintings by Raphael, Michelangelo, Salviati, Luca Penni, Giulio Romano and Primaticcio.

When a small but powerful 1826 painting by Corot of a craggy rock formation came up for auction three years ago at Sotheby's in New York, Getty curator Scott Schaefer was working with a museum trustee who wanted to buy it. When the trustee was outbid, Schaefer tracked down the winning bidders and was "absolutely shocked," he said, to find that they lived so close: Brian and Eva Sweeney, a Manhattan Beach couple who were quickly and quietly building...

Joris Minne, 91, the Belgian engraver and sculptor credited with helping revive the art of engraving. Minne and four other Flemish graphic artists--Frans Masereel, Henri Van Straten, Jan-Frans Cantre and Joseph Cantre--founded the art magazine Lumiere in the 1920s. The magazine was a key force in generating new interest and techniques in wood engraving. The five were credited with popularizing in the early 20th-Century the art of wood, copper and linoleum engraving.

Alberto Beltran Garcia, 80, a noted painted, engraver and political cartoonist in Mexico, died Friday at a Mexico City hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage. Born in Mexico City, Beltran began studying art when he was 15 and soon landed a job drawing illustrations for several local publishers. His illustrations were so popular that readers began snapping up books that contained his work, bolstering a publishing industry that was struggling through a prolonged sales slump.

Philip Anschutz, who put the Kings and their parent company, AEG, up for sale earlier this week, leads the list of 52 names submitted and approved to be engraved on the Stanley Cup. The engraving process was scheduled to begin on Friday in Montreal and is expected to continue into next week. Anschutz, who bought the Kings out of bankruptcy in 1995 with partner Ed Roski Jr., is the first name on the list. Anschutz's wife, Nancy, follows. Roski's name was not on the list. He was identified as an owner in the team's playoff guide.

Frank Gasparro, former chief engraver of the U.S. Mint, whose designs ranged from the Lincoln Memorial side of the penny to the Susan B. Anthony dollar, died Saturday at a hospital in Havertown, Pa. He was 92. "I've been called the world's richest artist," Gasparro, chief engraver for the last 16 of his 39 years at the mint, liked to say. The claim did not bend the truth by much because about 50 billion of his Lincoln Memorial pennies have been circulated since 1959.

The moon, just out, hung over the Ozarks like a pale opal. Soon families would be saying grace over Sunday dinner; children would be clamoring to turn on the Christmas lights. It was time to go home. But in the darkening woods, four teen-agers lingered, enjoying the rush they always felt when they killed something. A kitten lay crumpled nearby. Sharing some unspoken secret, the boys exchanged furtive glances in the fading light. They were growing edgy.

With St. Patrick's Day coming up, Rick Rosensteel has been turning out a lot of shamrocks and Celtic crests and "Erin Go Braghs." For Valentine's, it was hearts and flowers. Rosensteel writes in stone. Or rather, he blasts in stone, using a pressurized hose and carbide tip, after a stencil has been applied to the stone's surface. "I used to work for a utility company as a mechanic, but I was really interested in crystal engraving and did it as a hobby," he said.