If all of Pittsburgh north of the rivers were still the City of Allegheny, that municipality would itself boast a large and important group of cultural and educational institutions from the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, through the Science Center, the National Aviary, CCAC (surely called Alle- gheny University by this time), the Children's Museum, the Mattress Factory and The Andy Warhol Museum, to the most recent addition to this roster, Artists Image Resource.

Founded only in 1996, AIR set out to provide a locus for print making in all its techniques, from simple intaglio and relief media to the most advance electronic imaging.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette "Uncle Remus With a Biko Twist," papier mache mixed media, above, is by Biko, one of four resident artists displaying work at Artists Image Resource on the North Side. Click photo for larger image. The Annual Projects Exhibition continues through Jan. 15 at 518 Foreland St., North Side. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesdays through Saturdays; call to verify holiday hours. For information, call 412-321-8664, or visit artistsimageresource.org.

Strongly education-oriented, AIR provides numerous internships to younger artists seeking more experience in these media and also opens itself to the entire community every Tuesday evening when anyone putting $5 in the till has access to all the facilities on Foreland Street, to basic materials, and to guidance and advice. A significant and very visible element in AIR's programs is its ability to provide periods of residence to established artists. The resident program has been underwritten through the small arts initiative of the Heinz Endowments, and it would be difficult to imagine a funding gesture that yields greater returns than this one.

AIR's resident artists for 2004 have been Emory Biko, James Duesing, Sergio Soave and Mary Tremonte. Their works accomplished at and through AIR form the contents of the show now on view in the facility's galleries, effective and interesting spaces intermingled with the working studios. The diversity and quality of the exhibited material are accurate testimony to the vitality of AIR's overall program and mission.

Biko, an African-American artist working in Pittsburgh, shares a part of his spectacular collection of documents and artifacts recording African-American life under the collection title, "The Museum of the African's Experience in America." The range of material has to be seen to be believed, and Biko uses much of it as a creative means of commenting on aspects of that experience.

Printmaking enters the scene with a series of 10 posters, color photo screenprints, that illustrate portions of the collection, items selected and assembled within the poster format, to shed further light and meaning on the material and its interpretation. The vivid strength of the posters in no way belies their polemical role.

The installation is dense, even a little overwhelming, and demands methodical working through. The viewer discovers the richness and then the anguish inherent in this assemblage. No one could conceivably look at these artifacts with indifference.

The dialogue between object and poster in Biko's installation finds a parallel in the cause-and-effect conception of Tremonte's work. In her current project, she creates prints that she then circulates for comment, only to incorporate reactions into further stages of the work. Tremonte combines images and printed text in the same work. The texts are often guardedly harsh or acerbic; they suggest a slightly stoical disillusionment that does not, however, impede a continuing struggle and progress. In the five large works executed in a combination of screenprinting and hand painting, the lettering of the texts is incorporated into the overall composition. The images themselves are engaging and may recall illustrations in a children's book. Just as there is an inherent tension or even contradiction between word and image within a single work, there seems to be a comparable opposition between the dark tone of the text passage and the blithe air of many of the images.

In Soave's work, retrospection seems to be a motivating force. Currently chair of the art division at the University of West Virginia, Soave draws on his personal history and the Italo-American experience. He has created three series of works titled, in translation, "Family Traits," "Family Compositions" and "Little Histories." These last are executed in oil on canvas, and in their jumbled arrangements of partial figures and statues, and in their rather warm, rich palette, they vaguely bring to mind Chagall.

The other two series are screenprints on paper (the "Family Compositions") and on steel plates (the "Family Traits"). These latter are particularly haunting, very much like imperfectly remembered faces. A dim, blurred frontal image hesitantly materializes on the surface of the steel; according to the technical treatment of the surface, areas are lightly rusted, conferring yet another degree and kind of removal from full recognition. Surely digging deeply into his memory, Soave has created a sort of impalpable family album in which events and personages are evoked with dream-like fragments.

Duesing, on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, is well known for his work in computer-generated animation. As a resident artist at AIR, he has been investigating the production of books that would offer an alternative type of animation; these have taken the form of "flip books," certainly one of the simplest and, I expect, earliest means of creating the illusion of movement in a static image. Drawing on his repertoire of creatures, developed in his series of DVDs, he has also produced suites of lithographs that can be likened to character studies. The incorporation of his vision, evolved electronically, into traditional forms of image circulation suggests the range of "cross-pollination" possible within the AIR programs.

Among Duesing's varied works in this showing is his latest laptop-created animated DVD, "Tender Bodies." Those familiar with his inventive turn of mind will recognize the all-out surrealism in this eight-minute presentation, a deliciously vicious sequence of actions by a host of disturbing sub-humanoids. It is an indescribable world, part Simpsons, part Goya's Black Paintings, part Dr. Doolittle, and maybe something of H.P. Lovecraft, but recognizable, I thought, as Pittsburgh, to judge from the appearance of the various settings to the action -- a dubious but real tribute to the resonance and mutability of our local scene.