The Irma Freeman Center for Imagination (IFCI) presents the exhibition Pittsburgh’s Avant-Garde featuring over 60 artists, in tandem with the upcoming release of the book Pittsburgh’s Avant-Garde: 60 Years Inside the Underground Art Scene, compiled and edited by Sheila Ali. The exhibition opens December 6th, 2024 and runs through March 7th, 2025. The work featured includes both well-known and lesser known artists as well as legendary musicians and musical acts such as Erin Synder, ATS, and Standing Wave. Pittsburgh’s Avant-Garde, the book, and the exhibition feature works in all media that explore a variety of subjects, themes, and processes. A selection of the artists in the book are in the exhibition, which is perhaps the most exciting show of Pittsburgh artists ever! These are heavy hitters! So invite your friends and colleagues! Bring your buyers! Alert the press! Hold the phone! This is Big! 

This historic exhibition brings together a community of notable and celebrated artists, collectives, and collectors. We have here: Doug Cooper, Robert Qualters, Thad Mosley, Samir Elsabee, vanessa german, Mr. Imagination, Rick Bach, Ellen Chides Neuberg, Irma Freeman, Tim Kaulen, Tom Sarver, James Shipman, Richard Schnap, James Simon, Larry Rippel, Ron Donoughe, Spaz, Sue Abramson, Emory Biko, Karen Antonelli, Chrisitne Bethea, Mike Bonello, Rob Long, Chuck Barr, Abira Ali, Kenneth Batista, etta cetera, Dennis Childers, Katy DeMent, Ruth Klawansky, Ryder Henry, Laura Jean McLaughlin, Ed Parrish Jr., Jim Brindle, Joan Brindle, Cheryl Capezzuti, Scott Turri, Jim Dugas, Sarah Zeffiro, Ruth Bedeian, subRosa, Bob Ziller, Bekezela Mguni, David Bernabo, Cara Gaetano, Brady Lewis, Pat McArdle, Steve Mendleson, Elizabeth Murray Finkelstein, Laverne Kemp, Evan Knauer, Michael FiG Mangiafico, Jana Conn, Bill Karaffa, Joelle Levitt Killebrew, Hong Zhao, Edgar Um Bucholtz, Teresa Martuccio, and Eric Calfo.

This exhibition was made possible with the enormous support of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, Allegheny Arts Revival Grant, Emily Fenton, Brett Boye, Jack Ball, Tom Sarver, Ed Parrish Jr., Elizabeth Murray Finkelstein, Katy DeMent, Angela Jane Fountas, and ConceptArt Gallery—and of course, the participating artists, almost all of whom have exhibited at the IFCI previously, and many who have had their own exhibitions or curated exhibitions here. Thank you! Stay tuned for the release of the book in February and a list of events. A portion of sales from the exhibition will go to the Avant-Garde book fund, a grassroots project. Please explore and enjoy this special, once in a lifetime exhibition!

* Exhibition Opening Reception December 6th 6 - 9 pm. Featuring classical Music by Erin Snyder & Doug Lischner 7:30 p.m.

* Gallery Hours: Tuesdays 3-5 pm, Saturdays 2-5 pm & Sundays 4-6 pm

* Artist Talk & Tour December 7th 3-5 pm

* Holiday Collage Workshop & Irma’s Birthday Party! December 14th 3-5 pm with Paper Lady Katy DeMent

* Artist Reception February 7th 6-9 pm. Music by Mike Bonello & Sam Pace + Band 8:30 pm

* Art Panel Discussion February 9th 3 pm. Vicky Clark, Sheila Ali, Christina Springer, Edgar Um Bucholtz, Scott Turri& Tim Kaulen

* Card Making February 8th 3 pm. Print your own Valentine with Sheila Ali

* Miniatures Workshop February 15th 3 pm with artist Ryder Henry

* Pittsburgh’s Avant-Garde Book Release Dance Party  TBA. Featuring The ATS/Knauer Bros Dance Band with Isaac Winograd on drums, Mike Marcinko on bass, Steve Seel + Evan Knauer on guitar, Melissa Knauer vocals and Steve Browne on trumpet.  

* Exhibition Closing Reception March 7th 6-9 pm. Featuring music by Standing Wave 8:30 pm

• Tagged Pittsburgh Artists

Pinaka Art is a collaborative between father and son, Ravindra and Sagar Kamath based in Pittsburgh, PA. Our combined experiences span a variety of media and techniques culminating in a wide variety of products and services. As a collective, Pinaka Art creates contemporary works inspired by South Asian motifs and culture.

Tales of cursive lands, sāgar and Ravi Kamath, Pinaka Art: Sagar Kamath is an interdisciplinary artist that creates work exploring his identity as an Indian-born American through painting, digital design, and Kathak. He draws inspiration from traditional South Asian forms and aesthetics. Sagar has commissioned works for Riverlife and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette amongst others.

The Irma Freeman Center for Imagination presents GOOD MORNING PENN AVE HOW ARE YOU. (The Making of Vaultart’s Mural & the Artists Who Made it) This exhibition will showcase the visual artworks of a collaborative mural team. This team consists of VaultArt Artists and staff, and local muralist educators. 

In June of 2022, Max Gonzales curated the creation of the VaultArt mural on the 50-foot-long exterior wall on South Winebiddle Street, “Good Morning Penn Ave How Are You”.

Eight primary Vault artists, Steph Neary, Max Gonzales, Vault artist mentor Sam Berner and six local artists combined their artistic styles and completed the mural in time for Vault’s five-year anniversary on July 1st 2022. Prior to the mural painting, each mural educator spent the day with the Vault team to share their painting processes. In 5 separate sessions, all artists collaborated on a large series of wood panel paintings

The Irma Freeman Center for Imagination presents rare original works by Irma Freeman (December 14, 1903 - June 10, 1994).  Irma’s name became a part of our city’s landscape with the opening of the IF in 2009. This exhibition called “Impressions & Found Work” is aptly named based on a unique combination of many displayed artworks having been only discovered recently (in basements, suitcases, boxes, in the mail, and, in one bizarre case, in a Shadyside resident’s garbage), along with most of the works that either have never, or rarely, been viewed before. This exhibition also offers high resolution prints of Irma’s paintings available for sale for the first time. The journey of the work reported found, along with a heap of art by Ruth Freeman, were at least six pieces labeled or signed by Irma Freeman.  The found treasure owes its recovery to Donna Palermo, a Pittsburgher who discovered, and rescued it from the rain after her landlord had tossed out the pile of dusty, large sketches into the garbage, outside her apartment in Shadyside (hauling in at least 50 items). The origins of how they got to that house on Aiken have been undetermined, even after ace reporter Bill O’Driscoll attempted to find a paper trail. Once Donna brought the art into safety, she began ruffling through it and was elated to recognize a name, whose labels read: “Artist: Irma Freeman” (probably from an entry into the Three Rivers Art exhibition in 1974.) as well as most items signed “Ruth Freeman”. Donna consequently found the Freeman Center and I spoke with her in this past summer. With Bill O’Driscoll from WSEA/local NPR, and a few relatives, including Irma’s daughter Ruth Freeman (78), we all went to investigate. What is shown here are a range of works dated from 1964 to 1974, with the other items not dated, but most likely from the early sixties or late fifties, especially noting one sitter’s Mad Man attire.

Other notable work is the largest painting ever done by Irma Freeman (4 x 8 feet) and most likely only once exhibited, since its colossal size kept it living in one spot for three decades, a house most recently occupied by Ruth. This large work (along with the other sketches seen here) were abandoned by Ruth Freeman after moving out of her Pierce Street dwelling two years ago. Ruth, is also a prolific artist and often has more work taking up space in her home than she can possibly manage. It was her request that this writer (niece to Ruth, and granddaughter to Irma) rummage through the house before it sold, and pull out the best of many paintings, books and art supplies, left by Ruth who moved to a much smaller house. Among the work recovered were sketches of Irma Freeman’s in many sizes, found and saved from the dumpster, along with Irma’s 1929 Passport and other important papers that noted her entry to Ellis Island. Other sketches (such as the portraits of Sheila and Abby) were found in the basement of the longtime Freeman home in a well-preserved suitcase that safeguarded them there for some thirty or more years. (Also found were many other remarkable sketches including a suitcase full of 18 x 23” sketch books with carefully rendered still-lifes, portraits and landscapes. It is a hope that another attempt to uncover and care for Irma’s many more pastel sketches will someday result in their being catalogued, photographed, displayed, and preserved, in a proper archive.

The other paintings here, never seen before by the author, include a wonderfully rich landscape painted on a wooden plank, probably meant to ornate the windowsill for the renovations done to Irma’s small row house during the last years of her life. Other works may have been seen, yet after doing some digging, the author notes that most of the Irma’s exhibitions shown at the IF Center occurred in 2010 (the IF Center’s first year of existence.) That year there were six exhibitions of Irma’s work: “Urban Landscapes”, “Later Portraits”, “Bridges & Fences”, “Waterscapes”, “Pathways” and “Flowers”. In 2015, we showed “Copper Foil Portraits by Irma & Ruth Freeman” and “Natural Renderings”. Other works have been exhibited in various group showings such as the Pittsburgh by Pittsburgh Artist series. Still more work was displayed as solo art exhibitions, but not clearly documented, such as “Cat Paintings”, “Surreal Landscapes” and “Early Portraits”. If you are an avid fan of Irma’s you may find a smattering of paintings that you have seen before. If they are here it is because the author and curator has an intense fondness for them coupled by their capturing a great nuance of Irma’s impressionistic period. It is never-the-less no less phenomenal to have these great paintings, prints and sketches cards by Irma Freeman available for the viewer.

This exhibition also offers a chance to study Irma’s many eclectic styles where her visions, as well as her lifespan (born in in Germany in 1903) fell fairly close to the evolution of Modern Art, ranging all the way from realism to abstraction, inclusive of many genres in between, such as those shown here as “impressions”. Despite many difficulties and obstacles in her life, Irma left behind an inspiring body of work, consisting of over 800 paintings and sketches. The legacy of Irma Freeman is a Pittsburgh treasure waiting to be discovered. 

–Sheila Ali, curator