The Irma Freeman Center for Imagination presents Outside the Lines, an exhibition featuring the mixed media collages of artists Kirsten Ervin and Deborah Lieberman. The opening reception will be Friday, September 5, 2025, 6-9 pm with live music by Cheddar Bay Brass Band. The exhibition closes September 30, 2025. Gallery Hours & Collage Workshops will be held on Saturday, September 13th and Saturday, 27, 2-5 PM.
Outside the Lines reflects over a year’s worth of collage work from artists Deborah Lieberman and Kirsten Ervin using the mediums of painting, illustration, fiber, text and found paper. The exhibition marks new territory for the artists, through common themes of surrealism, alchemy, narrative, and the passage of time.
For the exhibit, Lieberman challenged herself to create 1,000 micro-collages, each on a piece of wood measuring 2 x 3 inches. “I wanted to use these as a visual journal”, says Lieberman, “ a year’s worth of my life in small increments. They represent a year’s worth of thoughts, stories and experiences.” The work reflects the many changes in Lieberman’s personal life over the past year and the social unrest happening locally and throughout the world. “I have used repeated symbols throughout the body of work, such as oranges, clocks, birds, keyholes and more. This work has given me an opportunity to process all of these experiences around me.”
Lieberman’s body of work in the show also touches upon unraveling, on being undone. “When things feel like they are falling apart,” she says, “It gives one an opportunity to open up and rebuild or take a new path. It is also a study of relationships past and present. How we are all intertwined.”
Ervin’s inspiration for her work in Outside the Lines are the used pages of vintage children’s coloring books, sourced from estate sales and eBay. Every one of Ervin’s mixed media collages began with a coloring page already marked on by another person, most probably a child. “I am struck by the energy and vitality in these pages,” says Ervin, “The more wildly colored they are, the more appealing I find them. It’s like they are either trying to figure out the rules, or actively breaking them.”
For Ervin, these marks reveal a pure expression of humanity, in contrast with the age of digital art, algorithms and AI. “In a sense I’m collaborating with children I’ve never met,” she says. “The challenge for me was how to respond creatively to the marks already made, and truly partner with that maker. I tried to get a sense of the spirit of that original artist and use that as my guide.” As Ervin transformed the original images, new stories organically emerged.
The two artists met in June, 2023 when Lieberman had a show at The Silver Apple Gallery, a tiny box sized gallery that Ervin curates outside of her house in Lawrenceville. The Silver Apple, the size of a free library, hosts tiny art shows every month and front porch art openings when the weather allows. The two artists discovered they both had a love for collage, that they were both long time art educators and both belonged to some of the same art guilds: Group A and the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. The Silver Apple hosted a show for Lieberman’s entire third grade art class from Linden Elementary School in 2024, complete with bubbles, sidewalk chalk, and treat bags. The artists began talking about collaborating on a show together and met every few months to share work and discuss their process and progress.
Over a year and a half later, their collaborative journey is made manifest in the art show Outside the Lines.