Screen savers

As Baltimore's folklorist then, Eff enabled the production of two films about screen painting. She finds thoughts of its demise unpleasant.

"We are very much at ebb," she admits. "But we also witness revivals." She's working on one, in collaboration with the museum; she hopes next year to take a census of current screen painters.

A few younger artists carry on the tradition here, such as Jennifer Crouse. She strays from the norm, painting screens backed by black cloth, to be hung inside, not in the window frame. Another, Jenny Campbell, paints streetscapes with photographic realism, and portraits of late Baltimore characters like H.L. Mencken and jazz pianist Eubie Blake.

Today you can find hundreds of decorated doors and windows in East Baltimore. Clearly they still appeal to the locals, and tour buses occasionally glide through the streets. At the Hatton Senior Center, every window frames a picture by the greats among the post-Oktavec generation: Leroy Bennett, Johnny Eck, Ted and Ben Richardson, Greg Reillo, Frank Abremski, Dee Herget, Tom Lipka – the last two, the only ones left.

But circumstances other than attrition among those who helped stimulate a surge of popularity have taken their toll. The painted screen no longer fulfills its original purpose: Before air conditioners became affordable in muggy Baltimore, the screens allowed people to leave doors and windows open without worrying about someone on the sidewalk looking in. You can't see what's behind the image on a painted screen from outside, but you can see what's out there from the inside, if not the image itself.

But "the worst blow to the art," says Eff, was demographic. Canton, a white, aging, working-class community, was invaded by younger people, couples with money and their new notions of chic; they snapped up the row houses and trashed the painted screens.

"They likened the screens to an Elvis painting on black satin," says Eff, "the worst kind of kitsch." So much was lost, but some was saved by locals with an affection for the past and a willingness to rummage through trash cans.

Not every social or technological change in Baltimore proved ill. The Internet, for instance, gave it a boost. Though screen painting as a craft hasn't moved far from its East Baltimore cradle, Herget's client list is global, and Mr. Lipka says over half his sales come through his website.

Lipka, a genial man with sparse white hair combed in a style recalling the 1950s, has completed more than 5,000 paintings. He promised his wife he'd fill every window of their house, 18 in all, with a painted screen. (He's three shy.)

Lipka personifies the Baltimore screen painter. He began without formal training, as most did, by watching someone else. His someone else was the late Alonzo Parks, "one of the great unsung masters of screen art ... who went door to door and bar to bar, painting walls, mirrors, vestibules, and screens for the price of a drink."

Lipka remains loyal to Oktavec. His painting is highly stylized and polished, his trees plump and billowing, his skies hopeful. The red-roofed bungalow is there. While every Lipka painting recalls every other, they're not repetitive.

The painted screens of East Baltimore provided more than privacy; displayed in their abundance they softened the monotony of the treeless urban terrain. Their effect on people driving through town was "surreal as you glanced at the windows of a house on a side street and saw through to a pond with swans, a red-roofed cottage, trees, clouds, and blue sky," wrote Frederick and Mary Fried in "America's Forgotten Folk Arts." "It was the surrealism of the utterly commonplace ... as in a painting by Magritte ... a mountain peak, a forest glade with deer, a waterfall ... all framed in windows and doors."

It was soft, like a local's greeting: "Welcome to Balmer, Hon."

[Editor's note: The spelling of the name Oktavec has been corrected.]

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