In an office the size of a concession stand, arts lobbyist Sue Hess delivers a bravura telephone performance: She coaxes, cautions and commiserates with legislators, arts leaders, CEOs, union people. As the legislature decides upon next year's arts funding, anxiety runs high in Maryland's arts community. Concern floods the phone lines.

Chairman of Maryland Citizens for the Arts Inc. -- the only organization which represents all the arts in the state -- Ms. Hess is in great demand. She's the one person everyone will talk to when they're not talking to each other. She's also the one person most likely to know what's happening. And, like a veteran air traffic controller, she's very good at tracking several subjects at once.

"You're kidding! I love it," she tells one legislator, who offers a moment of comic relief fresh from the budget battles. She mouths an answer to a visitor's unrelated question, leans back in her chair and runs her slender, Anguilla-tanned fingers through her hair. Her hazel eyes widen in surprise at another Annapolis anecdote.

Today's big subject is the state of the state's arts funding and whether or not the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will get the extra money it has bargained for. The orchestra provoked ire within the arts community by asking the legislature for an extra $1 million to reduce its budget deficit this year. Criticism held that the orchestra's solo lobbying not only came at a bad economic time but also threatened the strength of the statewide coalition of arts organizations.

(This week the symphony's request was denied by the General Assembly. In addition, $700,000 in grants to arts organizations was cut from the proposed budget for the Maryland State Arts Council.)

"United we stand, divided we fall," Ms. Hess says. "What I see from this situation is that the symphony has opened Pandora's box. Probably every organization who gets funding from the arts council will lobby their own individual legislators for increases next year. I think the legislators are going to be inundated, unhappily inundated, with requests from anywhere from 50 to 150 organizations."

Ms. Hess, by the way, is a big fan of the BSO: She sits on the boards of the symphony and Center Stage. After nearly 30 years of living in Salisbury, however, she is also one of the most prominent supporters of the smaller arts organizations whose constellation stretches from Wicomico to Garrett counties.

These connections have helped her build one of the nation's most respected arts advocacy groups, according to Marilyn Wheaton, chairman of the State Arts Advocacy League of America. Maryland Citizens represents roughly 8,000 members. Its primary purpose is to lobby the General Assembly for money that the Maryland State Arts Council distributes to arts organizations, arts councils and individual artists throughout the state.

And arts funding has looked a lot better since Ms. Hess has helped to increase it. In 1980, the year she replaced Maryland Citizens founder Judge Francis D. Murnaghan Jr. as chairman, the state gave the arts council $1.3 million. Ten years later, the council received $8.7 million, a sum that allowed qualified arts organizations to receive almost 10 percent of their annual operating costs.

That kind of increase has meant that many nonprofit arts groups operate more like businesses than volunteer groups. They have hired fund-raisers, bought computers, conducted market studies.

And they have expanded and strengthened what arts people call the state's cultural infrastructure: A 1989 study by the state showed that more than 12,000 jobs were created by Maryland's nonprofit arts industry and that the arts contributed $357 million annually to the economy.

At the moment, Maryland ranks 10th in per capita arts spending among American states and territories, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

"If you were to call Sue Hess the godmother of arts advocacy groups in the country, it wouldn't be an understatement," says Sam Campana, a member of SAALA and executive director of Arizonans for Cultural Development.

You might also call her one of the arts' greatest volunteers. People are astonished to learn that the 59-year-old lobbyist works full time simply for the love of it. (Married to John Hess, owner of the Hess Apparel chain of women's specialty clothing stores on the Eastern Shore, she has refused a paycheck since beginning her advocacy work in 1977.)

Ms. Hess can pitch the bottom-line importance of the arts as well as any. But it's not what keeps her starry-eyed. She struggles to describe the emotion and inspiration generated by a recent performance of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

"It was more than an artistic experience, it was communication," she says. "I was part of this totally integrated audience. We were all talking the words of the arts. All barriers were gone. . . . The arts bridge the gap between people. Where else can you have black and white and yellow look at something and hear something and all be able to feel the same way?"

"Part of Sue's energy comes from the fact that her motives are of the highest type," says Keren Dement, executive director of the Anne Arundel County Commission on Culture and the Arts and chairman of the Maryland State Arts Council.

"She's not just another lobbyist out to make a buck. She's doing this because she is doing the right thing. And that sense of moral imperative stands out. . . . She's like an Earth Mother to the arts, in a way."

Sue Levin Hess -- her brother Joel Levin works as an attorney in Baltimore -- grew up on Park Avenue in the Reservoir Hill section of the city; her father owned the old Levin Furniture store on North Avenue. She recalls years of watching movies at the Rialto and eating splendid corned beef -- Le Sandwich, No. 23 -- at Nate's and Leon's, one of Baltimore's legendary delicatessens.

It was also a childhood framed by the arts: elocution lessons, ballet lessons -- which she loved -- piano lessons -- which she hated -- and an increasing interest in theater. She started the drama club at Western High School and continued acting at the University of Maryland and Goucher College, when her parents denied her permission to test her skills in New York.

Shortly after college, she married John Hess, whose family owned Schleisner's clothing store on Howard and Saratoga streets. The couple lived in Salisbury, where Mr. Hess was running a branch of the family business. Hess Apparel later expanded into seven stores.

While she was raising their three children, Ms. Hess became known as the radio and TV voice of Hess Apparel as well as an advocate of the local arts scene. She also became known as the star of many community theater productions.

Eastern Shore friends praise her skills as a parent of three -- "We tried to model our own parenting on how the Hesses did it," says longtime friend Judy Jones -- and the strength she showed when she had a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction in 1980.

Characteristically, Ms. Hess credits family, friends and her various arts obligations with pulling her through the crisis.

"I'm very much Jewish," she says. "I believe in the history and I do believe in God, but I'm not particularly religious. . . . I think that people can face up to and withstand the big knocks. It's the little things that throw us sometimes."

She says the worst part of her job, for instance, is trying to organize the details of such events as Arts Day. In February, Maryland Citizens held its biennial arts awareness and arts lobbying day in Annapolis for advocates from around the state.

"We had to logistically make sure the equipment was delivered one place, the food came to another place, and so on," she waves her hands. "I hate those things. Intimate logistics!"

The best part?

Her eyes search the air for an appropriate response.

"To know that we can make a difference, to be able to lead the people of Maryland equitably into the next decade of arts funding," she begins, then stops.

"What I love is what you've just seen me do here on the phone. I like defusing situations. I got the information from the horse's mouth, then I defused so and so, then I was able to harness the efforts of a huge union to be supportive of increased funding. I enjoy the politics of this job. . . . I like to be able to put the right people together with the right people."

"Sue's very good at the schmooze mode," says Ms. Dement. "What she does with advocacy is both public leadership and a lot of back-room work: A lot of phone calls, a lot of shaking hands, a lot of knowing where the buttons are that have to be pushed. Moreover, she's not afraid to step into the fray: gloves on and arms swinging."

Others marvel at her seeming lack of personal ambition.

"Sue likes to have credit, but she isn't a powermonger. If she wanted to be, she certainly could be," says Jim Backas, director of the Maryland State Arts Council.

"If anyone would have a fault with me, it's that I'm too particular, too fastidious," Ms. Hess says. "I want everything to be perfect, and that really drives a lot of people crazy."

She double-checks and triple-checks her material, says Anne South, executive director of Maryland Citizens for the Arts. And she shoots through life in a bold blaze of phone numbers. Sue Hess handles business from her home in Ocean City, from her son's home in Salisbury -- where she juggles baby-sitting, lobbying and fund raising -- from Hess Apparel, from her condominium in Cross Keys -- even from the office.

For the past several years, she has flown back and forth from the Eastern Shore, usually once a week, for business. Maryland Citizens does pick up the tab for her expenses.

Now she will spend more time in Baltimore as the organization plans how to expand its arts awareness programs, a move recommended by the recent Governor's Commission Report on the Future of the Arts in Maryland.

Having watched the organization grow from her kitchen into a cubicle in Mill Centre in Hampden, Ms. Hess is tickled to find herself considering several offers that would relocate Maryland Citizens to a larger space -- one that's free. The annual budget of $50,000 pays Ms. South's salary and general operating costs, and Ms. Hess would love to pour the rent money into more advocacy work.

She is exceedingly generous with credits: A discussion of her career becomes the story about people who have helped along the way. Among them, she lists Peter Culman, managing director of Center Stage, who suggested ways to structure her job, and R. Clayton Mitchell Jr., current speaker of the House, who helped teach her the art of being persuasive without being overbearing.

She is less comfortable writing and making speeches. She struggles with statements, often preferring to borrow the

eloquence of others.

"The arts are essential; the arts are not something to be thrown a bone after everything else is taken care of because everything else will never be taken care of," she says, quoting John Brademas, former president of New York University.

Then she pauses, ever the diplomat.

"You see, it's not that we're more important. But we're certainly as important."

THE HESS FILE

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Occupation: Arts lobbyist.

Born: May 1, 1932, in Baltimore.

Education: B.A. in English, minor in drama from Goucher College in 1953; president of the senior class.

Current homes: Ocean City and Baltimore.

Family: Married since 1955 to John Hess Sr. Children: John Jr., 35, president and CEO of Hess Apparel; Pam Gibson, 33, graphic designer and president of Hess Design in Boston; and Rick, 29, a creative executive for TriStar Pictures in Hollywood. Grandchildren: Julie Anna and Michael Hess.

Most memorable performance: F. Murray Abraham's 1980 portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac at Center Stage.

Favorite Walkman tape for exercise: "A Night at Studio 54."

On the climate for the arts in the 1990s: "I feel the arts are going ultimately to profit from the recession, strange as that may seem. People look for sustenance from the arts in times of economic stress, and, I think, more than ever they are going to want to nurture their souls."