in brief

es and a neon blue halo, looks like Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and is causing a stir at a Chicago art school.

An undergraduate student’s papier-mâché sculpture of Obama as a messianic figure — titled “Blessing” — went on display Saturday at a downtown gallery run by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. By yesterday, word of the piece had spread on political blogs, and the school had been flooded with calls.

David Cordero, 24, made the sculpture for his senior show after noticing all the attention Obama has received since he first hinted he may run for the presidency.

“All of this is a response to what I’ve been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins,” Cordero said. “In a lot of ways it’s about caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped.”

Obama’s campaign worked yesterday to distance the Illinois senator from the artwork.

SEATTLE — A University of Washington researcher was shot to death in her office yesterday morning by a former boyfriend who then turned the gun on himself, police said.

Officers responding to reports of gunfire found the two dead in an office on the fourth floor of Gould Hall, the university’s architecture building, Assistant University Police Chief Ray Wittmier said.

The 26-year-old woman was granted a restraining order last month against Jonathan Rowan, according to court documents. University police said he was not affiliated with the school.

“I cannot find him but he can find me (knows my place of work),” the victim, identified by colleagues as Rebecca Griego, wrote in a restraining order petition filed against Rowan on March 6 in King County Superior Court.

About six shots were fired, and a handgun was found in the room. There were no eyewitnesses, and no one else was harmed, Wittmier said.

HILLIARD, Ohio — Police arrested a prison inmate at a house where he holed up yesterday with a hostage after overpowering a guard in a hospital and fleeing with the guard’s gun and uniform, authorities said.

Billy Jack Fitzmorris came peacefully out of a room in the suburban Columbus home, police said. Authorities did not say who the hostage was, but no one was injured.

Fitzmorris, 34, was believed to have escaped on foot from St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown. Police believe he robbed two banks in central Ohio before going into the house in Hilliard, about 150 miles southwest of Youngstown, Hilliard police Lt. Evert Lambert said.

From Associated Press reports