In the black-and-white cartoons of the 1920s, everything danced.

A jazz tune would start up and everything within earshot, whether that thing had ears or not, would start bouncing to the beat. Anthropomorphic animals danced out of dancing buildings onto streets filled with dancing cars.

Those cityscapes just couldn’t seem to help themselves.

Diane Groenert’s buildings have some of that same liveliness.

For well over a decade now, the local artist has been painting what she calls house portraits. She got the idea from one of Fort Wayne’s more internationally renowned male artists who, for the purpose of not wanting to spoil a good story, shall remain nameless here.

The way Groenert tells it, this shrewd-as-he-is-talented artist drove out to one of the more well-heeled lake communities in the region and made paintings of a bunch of charming cottages thereabouts. Then he invited the owners of all those cottages to come to an art show where, much to their surprise, they found paintings of their beloved vacation homes. Needless to say, the artist made a killing.

Groenert isn’t quite so mercenary about her house portraits. For a fee, Groenert will paint a portrait of your house in such a way that it seems just as alive as it undoubtedly sometimes does in your own mind.

Groenert tries to bring out the personality of each house (which, for a house, is a composite of its architectural nature and the nature of its inhabitants).

She says her house portraits are likely to incorporate any number of things: the likes and dislikes of the people living there, childhood memories, departed loved ones, pets, the history of the building, etc.

The artist by whom Groenert is most influenced in her house-depicting endeavors is underground comics legend Robert Crumb.

“He was one of the heroes of my hippie days, not that my hippie days are over yet,” she says.

Groenert says Crumb never seemed to have any boundaries.

“I guess I have always been trying to fight my way out of my Lutheran box,” she says.

In 2001, Groenert painted her first public structure: the Allen County Courthouse. On Friday, she unveiled her latest local landmark: Fort Wayne’s Famous Coney Island on Main Street.

She says she has painted 16 public buildings thus far, most of them places where local residents go to have a good time. Her portraits of Henry’s, Columbia Street West and JK O’Donnell’s (among many others) capture the essential natures of those establishments and are as instantly recognizable to habitués as the faces of the people with whom they often share bar stools.

Representations of Groenert’s work are available in many shapes and sizes at Riegel’s Pipe and Tobacco, Neuhouser Nursery, Visit Fort Wayne and Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory. Groenert also has her own corner in the Fort Wayne Museum of Art gift shop. Her website is www.dagroenert.com.

If you are one of those people who still send postcards and note cards, there may not be a better way to convey the particulars of our community to outsiders than by sending them something with Groenert’s art on it.

Groenert says she has always wanted her art to get people excited about the city and “spark their imaginations” about the sort of place downtown could become. Now that the city center actually seems to be moving toward greater and greater crescendos of refurbishment, Groenert says she feels like she has contributed to downtown revitalization.