This site represents the newly forming education center named after the great Pittsburgh painter, Irma Freeman.  This site is a means to update the progress of creating the gallery in real time and space. We are renovating a building at 5006 Penn Avenue, amid the plethora of underground galleries already growing in cultural district of Garfield in the east end of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

Oh yes, all images on this site have a copyright if 2007. If you are interested in using any of Irma’s beautiful paintings, please contact us at <sheiladali@irmafreeman.com>

WE especially are interested in building bridges, so don’t be shy....

For those unfamiliar with her, you might wonder:

What is the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination?

The Irma Freeman Center for Imagination is a community art center with a mission to enrich and diversify the local community by building positive experiences in a multicultural progressive setting. We use art, including the work of Irma Freeman, to nurture the imagination.  By instilling confidence through creativity and a knowledge of sustainable living, we strive to make the world a better place.

Who is Irma Freeman?

Irma Freeman was a German born Pittsburgh artist who inspired many young artists during her lifetime.  She left a legacy of over 500 paintings, and other works of art.  Her work ranges from realistic portraits to fauvist/post-impressionist, fantastical landscapes.  She made the majority of her artwork after the age of 70, continuing to work fervently until her death at age 90, in 1994.  During the last decade of her life, Irma’s work was exhibited throughout galleries in the city of Pittsburgh along side contemporary artists, who were often artistic admirers of her aesthetically vibrant compositions.  In 2003 there was a huge retrospective of her art to celebrate her 100th birthday at the Garfield Artworks. 400 Pittsburghers came to see over 114 paintings, art installations, films, videos and literary works about her life in pre-World War Germany. After emigrating to the US, Irma Freeman lived a good part of her life in poverty.  Yet, despite her personal hardships, in her paintings she created a richness that inspired her family and friends, as well as a following of young artists. It is her notion of imagination and wonderment that lead us to an idyllic world: using color and form, she was able to transcend her little house in the ghetto into palace of dreams. She has a story that we want to tell.  Because, through art, Irma created the world into a better place, we envision her vast legacy of paintings to represent ideals that will inspire a cleaner, more beautiful earth. Irma Freeman’s work certainly can promote a consciousness of self-preservation, amid challenging surroundings.  The Irma Freeman Center For Imagination is a place to help youths reach great achievements, beyond impoverishment and lack of motivation, toward a greater wealth of intrinsic value. Through art, students, patrons and members can gain a new sense of environmental responsibility through seeing not only Irma’s vibrant work, but also through the work of other artists, such as in this exhibition, The Art of Salvation and the Visionary Art of Irma Freeman.

Our Goal for the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination

Our goal in building a community art and green energy center in Garfield is to target the at-risk population of the neighborhood, while, at the same time, invite people of all walks of life to participate in classes and events at the IF Center. Although we held summer classes, our official Grand Opening Exhibition is scheduled for Friday October 9th, 2009 from 6 - 10 pm. (For more information under “exhibition”.) We have begun building bridges by partnering with local schools, organizations and artists in the city of Pittsburgh, and around the world.  We have thus far partnered with the Shadyside Boys & GIrls’ Club, the Unitarian Church, the Ellsworth Street Fair, and the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, the Friendship Youth Development Association, the East Liberty Branch of the Carnegie Library and the Fort Pitt After School Community Center. Our classes and outreach programs include students of all ages, creeds, nationalities and economic incomes.  We plan to curate art exhibitions that represent local and global artists; and to share the inspirational artwork of Irma Freeman in a museum quality setting. Our long-term building plans include the construction of an indoor atrium, using grey water systems that will allow subtropical botanicals and a waterfall to adorn the gallery spaces, and a small garden roof. We want to eventually house a small café, an art library and boutique to showcase and reference above ground and underground artists and artisans. We use recycled and reusable materials and resources whenever possible for our arts and green energy education programming to promote visionary creative project outcomes for the individual, and for the community as a whole.

The Need and Unique Activities at the IF Center

Although many art galleries and activist centers have sprung up with the help of the Friendship Development Association and the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, we believe that there remains a gap in connecting the neighborhood residents to the area's exploding cultural arts corridor, especially after the recent closure of the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative programming.  We believe the existing cultural division is further widened by the gentrification of the area.  For this reason we intend to act as an arts community center, much like the community centers in other districts such as the Union Project in Highland park and the Kingsley Center and the Mount Ararat Community Center in East Liberty, which all serve for the betterment of their communities by offering a variety of classes and after school programs. However, we will be very different from them, and the Garfield Community Center, in the fact that we encompass an exceptional outlook and practice of reclaiming energy, and envision our center as growing toward being an efficient, sustainable, self-sufficient building.   For instance, we will at some point install solar panels and solar hot water heaters. We have thus far installed radiant floor heating under a mosaic floor, and sprayed soy-based insulation in the walls and ceiling, and began some rooftop gardening that uses a rain barrel for irrigation. We also plan to expand our workshop studio (which currently shares the gallery space) into the adjacent garage, and build an archive to house the substantial works of Irma Freeman.

We have had a lot of positive feedback from the community concerning our exterior façade. Sheila Ali did most of the work on the façade mosaic; which is hard to miss if you pass by the 5000 block of Penn Avenue. Sheila did have a lot of help finishing the 25 by 20 foot sign from Bill Baxter and a crew who helped install the large mosaic pieces. (see “if progress” on our web page for photos and movies of the process of making the mosaic façade, which took about six months to finish). Brett Boye cut every bottle by hand to make the bottle walls, originally modeled after the Earthships, of Taos, New Mexico, which are entirely self-sustaining dwellings. We have hired a number of artists, contractors, and tradesmen to renovate the building, often giving jobs to skilled laborers who live hand to mouth. We are currently working on a handicap ramp and a floor mosaic, which we will have done by the grand opening. We are looking into the future for promoting more programming involving the community. We offer yoga regularly on Monday nights from 6:30 – 7:45pm. Our next project on the horizon will be one for parents and children. It is a synthesis of art and green technology, where parents and children will build solar ovens and heaters, and a miniature model house using actual green technology, such as solar panels, wind power and gray water garden. This class is being offered for free for those who cannot afford to pay, and we hope to hold a second mosaic workshop, as the first was so successful.

As part of our initial promotion and integration into the community, we have offered most of our classes for free or at very low rates. Our most successful classes have been “IF We Could Build a Dream” (partnered with the Boys & Girls Club): this was a workshop where children learned about green energy and expressed what they learned in mixed media collage. The art pieces were exhibited at East Liberty Branch of the Carnegie Library, which were very well received by the patrons of the library. “Windows of Peace”, Yoga, Puppetry and “Marvelous” Mosaics” (where we invited four artists to participate in teaching their individual styles of working, including Laura Jean McLaughlin, Sandy Streiff, Daviea Davis and our own director/teacher, Sheila Ali.

In addition to being a cultural center for the arts in Garfield, we a part of the new wave of cutting edge of sustainable living, and thereby contributing to the status of Pittsburgh as the most livable city. The IF Center is also a part of the transformation of this inner city district, which is still very much dominated by empty storefronts and boarded up houses. We wish not only to contribute to Garfield, and to Pittsburgh, into becoming a more culturally rich, greener city, but we also visualize an interfacing horizon from plan to planet. Thus, with the expansive use of sustainable resources we would be aiming beyond the local into the global community, in order to make a radically positive, much needed, change, upon the world and its future generations.

What people say about the IF Center 

“I really enjoyed the mosaic class. It showed me that by getting involved with art I could go on a vacation without ever leaving the area. I got so involved and interested that I forgot about my problems with everyday stressors. I also learned to become more creative. Thanks to my wonderful teacher, Sheila Ali. She taught me to feel the work and things seemed to flow together for me.” 

          Cheryl Lydiard, student from the IF Center

“The mosaic class has given me the knowledge and inspiration to keep mosaicing far into the future. I thank the Center for Imagination for providing me with the opportunity to learn from professionals and create wonderful pieces of art.”

    Alan P. Marrero, apprentice at the IF Center

“From the very start, the Irma Freeman Center for the Imagination at 5006 Penn Ave. was stopping traffic… it was the drop-dead mirror, colored, cut-bottle, and tile front design that caught everyone’s eye. This isn’t by accident. Ali and Boye want their showplace to draw people from the outside to the inside.”

    “Behind the Dazzling Façade”…, the Bulletin