When you walk into Fe Gallery in Lawrenceville, you see a barrage of colors, forms, textures and shapes emanating like heat from the hundreds of pieces of art.

Paintings, photographs, collages, textile works, sculptures and small television screens playing videos adorn the walls. The gallery's current exhibition, "In the Making: 250 Years/250 Artists," celebrates Pittsburgh's 250th birthday by displaying a collection of 250 different works of art, all by different artists.

The mood of the exhibition is bright and explosive, bringing the artists of Pittsburgh to life through the creativity in the pieces and the sheer magnitude of the collection.

When you stand in the center of the room, hundreds of works of art surround you. It's as if the room is filled with noise, noise of every tone and frequency that bounces off the walls, stringing across the room from one piece of art to another.

It's as if the art is speaking through its brilliance, through its vivid color and yet, as the group I was with on my visit to the gallery spread out among the paintings, sculptures and photographs, the room was completely silent.

It's impossible to study each piece, but it's a delight to explore the exhibition and keep finding new things to enjoy and ponder. Director Jill Larson has put together quite a show, filled with intriguing pieces.

One of these is "Model Landscape #22" by Carin Mincemoyer, which is a three-dimensional work made of plastic packaging and bits of sand, pebbles and moss-like material.

In the empty places in the plastic where something was once held (and on the parts that bulge out), short trails of sand and moss are spread out thinly, creating the illusion of a small natural world living in and on the artificiality of the plastic.

The piece stands out because of its adherence to simplicity, and yet it is filled with questions. What was here before? What will grow in these bits of sand and trails of green? How can something live, or pretend to live, on cold, slippery plastic?

"Model Landscape #22" appeals to a common state of humanity, where we see something simple but know how much could be behind it; or we say something brief that carries more meaning than it seems to.

Mincemoyer says that her art is created through an interest in "the intersection between organic and man-made forms and how these two things intertwine ...."

Although it does possess this artificial/natural blend, the piece suggests not a sense of unpleasantness, but of clarity and simplicity. "Model Landscape #22" is placed perfectly in the gallery, right at eye level, so visitors can look directly at and into it.

"Quantum Sex," by Connie Cantor, a large work made of white paper, black paint and silver marker, is another outstanding piece.

It appears as many things to the interpretive eye; one side seems like a thick tree trunk with spindly branches stretching out onto the rest of the paper. On the other side, those branches look like tangles of telephone wires on a white winter sky.

The black paint is flung wildly onto the paper, and intricate silver markings of eyes, spirals, claws, squiggles and dots infest the blackness and overflow into the white areas as well. The paint seems to writhe in silence on the paper, somehow communicating a sense of excruciating cold; the piece is out of control but in perfect, satisfying focus.

This work stands before and for all the other pieces in the exhibition because it is the kind of art that lets your eyes pass over once or twice, then locks your gaze; when I first passed by the place in the gallery where it hangs, I didn't even see it, but the second time around, I stopped in my tracks and stared. It is the kind of piece that immediately connotes many things but is open to interpretation.

As I stared, everything I have already mentioned made connections from what I saw to my brain --pain, cold, trees, telephone wires, tangles, writhing, growth, winter, silence, chaos, focus. This immediate stream of connections can be analogized to walking inside the gallery and seeing the hundreds of pieces on the walls, the embodying art of the city of Pittsburgh.

Much of the artwork showcased in the exhibitionion is similar to "Model Landscape #22" and "Quantum Sex" in the sense that behind them all is either intense thought or emotion; they convey beauty and clarity; pain and wildness; confusion and simplicity.

These 250 works of art in "In the Making: 250 Years/250 Artists" are saturated with the creativity of hundreds of Pittsburgh artists, vivid in color and thick with meaning. The art in the exhibition is of high quality; the Fe Gallery collection marks Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary in a unique, festive and satisfying way. I highly recommend it.

The exhibition continues through Jan. 10. Fe Gallery is at 4102 Butler Street; 412-860-6028 .