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A Child’s Oceanic Garden interactive installation... Click to view Ellsworth Street Fair Artists & Artworks!!

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:01:29 -0400

A Child’s Oceanic GardenChildren Designed their own
TOYS!!!!!

We created a place for children and families to together to create toys and with them in a sensory environment to play in. It had the theme of a Child’s Oceanic Garden with manipulatives to create a sensory experience. With the transformation of the space firstly with visual images of my grandmother’s magnificent paintings hanging in the inner and outter quarters of our play space. Irma created her paintings (numbered in the hundreds) during the 60 years she lived in the Shadyside with her husband Lou. Irma Freeman, had an extremely vivid imagination, which gave her enthusiasm to live, despite the poverty and economic strife she endured for a good portion of her life. She lived to see the many changes within the little enclave behind Ellsworth Avenue called Pierce Street, beginning (for her) with an influx of German immigrants, of whom she was one. Of her 500 hundred or so paintings, we will show only water landscapes, which will be hung, as a backdrop for the interactive exhibit. There was sand for castle making and other constructions, a pool of water for sailing boats, and wading, a fuzzy jumpy to play and to roll in the soft glittery grass, pink octopi, slippery snakes. multi-colored animals, glossy amphibians and fish, bending flowers and shiny grass!

The space had four large paintings with water landscapes with two work tables where parents and children can made their own creations to play within this fantastical subterranean ocean scenario. Pierce Street is a gentrified area where there a still a number of neighborhood children from low-income families. It is clear that they already struggle with basic needs, while, ironically, at the same time their values, like most children, tend to be driven by the media culture, curtailing their goals into materialistic wants. We would like to sway this attitude focused on superficial, unhealthy goals by fostering intrinsic gains. We want to give kids a means to understand how to see beyond their situation by constructing their own dreams, their own toys, related to a healthier, self-sustainable world. In addition, families from all walks of life enjoyed a place that would occupy their children in a creative environment. This interactive is an outreach program that exhibits Irma Freeman’s artwork as well as engages children and adults alike.

What If we could build a dream?

Sun, 8 Jul 2007 14:55:04 -0400

We had a wonderful workshop that will took place at the Shadyside Boys and Girls Club where participants took part in a three day seminar facilitated by the staff of the Irma Freeman Art Center. The students discussed the renewable resources compared with nonrenewable resources, pollution and solutions. They then created an imaginary place on earth that is beautiful, peaceful, natural, and even magical, using green energy formations in their landscapes, such as solar panels, electric cars an catch water systems. The artworks represented a kind of paradise where money is of no value, and the riches of the sky, earth, and water were expressed as modes of renewable and sustainable environmental culture. Students will be asked to engage in a dialogue about how they can contribute to a better world, first with emphasis on using everyday ways of providing clean and efficient energy. The students then produced collages with recycled materials, such as brown paper bags and wallpaper and other miscellaneous collected “trash” to create their perfect, harmonious world as a two-dimensional landscape. These works were exhibited online as part of the IF Art Center web site, with the actual work exhibited at the Boys and Girls Club of Shadyside at first, then later, at the Carnegie Library of East Liberty. Some images will also contribute to a brochure to promote the construction of the Art Center. We ask our constituents to think beyond the confines of economic hardship, and to boldly ask the question: what IF?

Irma Freeman’s 100th Birthday bash at the Garfield Artworks

Wed, 6 Jun 2007 08:36:06 -0400

“This is by far the best show I have ever scene!” Bea Luna

This photo of family and friends was taken Thanksgiving 1994, 5 months after Irma’s death. Irma and Louis were married circa 1929: this is their wedding photograph.

Wed, 6 Jun 2007 07:57:45 -0400

Irma arrived by ship and spent her first days at Ellis Island

Fri, 11 May 2007 23:02:01 -0400