ABOUT
Mission
Artists Image Resources (AIR) is an artist run, non-profit print and imaging organization established in 1996 to serve as a laboratory for artists, educators and the community. AIR’s mission is to integrate the creation of fine art prints with educational programs that explore the role of the artist in contemporary culture. AIR’s primary activities are to initiate and facilitate projects with professional artists and to create active laboratory environments where artists, students and the public interact. AIR’s fundamental interest is in how print and imaging processes are being used in broader contemporary art making practice and how these practices impact and reflect culture.
History
Artists Image Resources (AIR) was established in 1996, was incorporated as a nonprofit Pennsylvania Corporation in 1997 and received nonprofit 501(c) 3 tax status in 1998. In 1996, AIR started working with professional artists on projects and began to organize resources in a 10,000 square foot space in an urban neighborhood on the North Side of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. In 1996 and 1997, AIR began working with university educators to design programs that would allow the aspiring artist to work directly, hand in hand, with the professional artist in an active real world studio environment. This methodology continues to define the studio as the active and engaged art production and learning laboratory that it is today.
Governance
MARK FRANCHINO (Board Chair) is an Artist, Designer, Craftsperson, and Educator living in Western PA. Originally from Long Island NY, he received a BFA in 1998 from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a MFA from the University of Delaware in 2002. Over the past 2 decades, with a broad approach to media, his drawings, prints, sculptures, and installations have been shown in more than 100 group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. His work in recent years has expanded into collaborative practice and into furniture and other functional objects, expanding his interests in the blur between art/design, abstraction/figuration, flat/dimensional, art/not-art, work/play, real/not-real.
MELINDA WILSON PIETRUSZA, Executive Committee Member, has over 15 years of experience working for non-profit arts organizations, primarily in membership, development, and event coordination. She has volunteered her administrative and marketing services to AIR for many years. She currently serves as the Community Development Coordinator for the Borough of Etna.
ROBERT BECKMAN, Co-Founder, Board Member, Executive Committee Member. Mr. Beckman is an artist and educator with over 30 years of experience exhibiting work and teaching (Carnegie Mellon University and Edinboro University of Pennsylvania). Mr. Beckman is an accomplished printmaker and has over 15 years of experience running a small business. He is a Co-Founders of Artists Image Resource and currently serves as the organization’s Director.
MICHAEL HEGEDUS, Board Member, Executive Committee Member, is an artist and accomplished printmaker. Michael has a BFA from The University of Pittsburgh.
HANNAH TURPIN, (Art and Exhibition Committee, Board Member), is an American curator in the contemporary art field. Since her arrival in Pittsburgh, Hannah has served as the Curatorial Assistant of Photography and Contemporary Art at the Carnegie Museum of Art, curated projects with The Neu Kirche Contemporary Art Center and worked with Casey Droege Cultural Productions and Radiant Hall. She gathered experience with curatorial and collections internships at several institutions including Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Columbus Museum of Art.
SARA RADELET, Founding Board Member, is the former Executive Director of the New Hazlett Theater on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Ms. Radelet also operates a freelance consulting business for non-profit organizations, offering grant writing, fundraising, and strategic planning services.
JOSEPH LUPO, Board Member, is Professor of Art at West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia. Mr. Lupo is an accomplished printmaker and has held leadership positions with a number of academic and print related organizations including SGC International.
Interview with In Community & Company
PARADISE GRAY joined the Board of Artists Image Resource in 2018. Paradise is a community organizer, author, artist, music producer, historian, and a founding member of 1Hood. Before moving to Pittsburgh in 1992 from the Bronx, Gray’s career in hip hop is legendary as a member of the group X Clan and as the manager and promoter for the hip-hop club “The Latin Quarter” in New York City in the 1980s.
MADELINE L. GENT A native of Franklin, PA, Gent became Executive Director at the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh in December 2017. She came to Pittsburgh from Washington, D.C. where she previously held positions at the Smithsonian’s Freer|Sackler, University of Maryland Art Gallery, Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture, and Johns Hopkins University. She completed her M.A. and Ph.D. coursework in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland.
Staff and Crew
Robert Beckman: Co- Founder — Executive / Artistic Director, (full time) (Duties include administrative oversight, printing, teaching, project and exhibition design and management). Mr. Beckman holds an MFA degree in Printmaking from Kent State University in Ohio.
Interview with Neighborhood Voices / Saturday Light Brigade
Feliks Pyron: Operations Manager / Staff printmaker. Duties include printing and education. Assists with all printing and instructional activities including education and community access. Feliks has a BFA in printmaking from Texas A&M University, Texas and an MFA from West Virginia University, WV.
Affiliated Printers
Ian Short: Co-Founder (Honorary) Resident Printmaker, (Project execution, printing and instruction). Mr. Short has been responsible for overseeing all printing activities undertaken by AIR. Mr. Short spent 30 years teaching printmaking and photography, 20 years at Edinboro University where he served as the chairman of the Art Department from 1993 to 1996.
Michael Hegedus, Printmaker. Michael has been assisting with production, education and community access projects with Artists Image Resource since 2010. Michael has a BFA from The University of Pittsburgh and is a working artist living in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.
Michael Budai: Printmaker. Michael has been assisting with production, education and community access projects with Artists Image Resource since 2010. Michael has a BFA from Edinboro University f Pennsylvania and is a working artist living in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.
Advisors
Howard Booth is an artist and arts administrator currently living and working in California.
Alison Oehler is the Director of Concept Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA.
Stefan Hoffmann is an internationally recognized vertical screenprinting artist. Mr. Hoffmann uses screenprinting to create site specific projects which re-contextualize information graphics. His projects create perturbations in the way we perceive our visual environment. The work engages fully in the architectural situations and specific contexts encountered. Projects are executed step by step, printing and painting directly on walls and windows. The whole process generally takes several weeks and can be entirely followed by the public. Most projects are temporary, disappearing after the exhibition. More about the artist can be found here: hoffmannprinting.com
Interview with Stefan Hoffmann
Asa Ana
is an interdisciplinary artist who creates artistic interventions that re-imagines community behavior. He has exhibited and curated artspace 101, 103, and 202 – a series of popup galleries in Homestead, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Ana curated social practice artworks in Pittsburgh and Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA and completed a cross-cultural public art project at Villa Flores, working in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to build artistic and creative experiences to make the Fourth District of the city neighborhood safer. Ana has been recognized by the United States Congress and the House of Representatives, including the Pennsylvania State Senate, for his artistic programming work in the Monongahela Valley in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Ana is a PhD student studying how art and creativity activates de-industrialized communities.
Robert Williams is an artist living and working in New York New York.
Tara Segars - Tutti Frutti