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It's been a rocky road for the area's oldest art organization over the past couple of years, but now The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh is back on track and wants everyone to know it. Hence its latest "New Members Exhibition," which opens Friday evening at the University Art Gallery in the Frick Fine Arts Building on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh.

Although the group lost both its onetime prominent Downtown headquarters at 937 Liberty Ave., which it was forced to sell to the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust last year during a financial crisis, and its annual spot on Carnegie Museum of Art's exhibition roster -- the venerable institution had hosted the organization's annual exhibition every year since its inception up to and including 2001. On the upswing, the group has grown in numbers, having added more than 130 artists to its membership since 2001. Its ranks have swelled to nearly 500 members in all.

This "New Members Exhibition" will showcase more than 60 works by as many new members, and if they have one thing in common with the group as a whole, it is diversity.

"We want to show the wealth of different kinds of artists that (are in the organization,)" says Sarah E. J. Williams, exhibition chair and one of the artist members included in the show. "We have very young artists and older artists who have been working at their art for a while. People who are fresh out of college, fresh out of graduate school. It's just a real different mix of people."

Although that kind of diversity always has been the group's strength, this exhibition reveals even more diversity in the types of works on display, which range from oil, acrylic and watercolor paintings to mixed-media collages, ceramics, quilts and digital media, as well as sculptures of glass, wood, even packing foam.

And like the packing foam piece -- "Total Original Packaging" by David Watts, which is a hilarious rendition of a reclining man and his dog -- many of the works display remarkable ingenuity.

For example, Jennifer Bechak presents a not-so-perfect place for slumber in the form of a small cot made of rubber, steel and rivets that she aptly tilted "Sleep is irrelevant." As torturous as it looks, it is no match for Heather Powell's untitled piece in which a miniature bed of nails made of pins hovers above whatever it is that looks like ground meat the artist has placed inside a small, wall-hung box. Although indiscernible is the artist's intent, overall the piece is undeniably creepy.

And though not readily apparent, except to those who witnessed Stephanie Flom transformed into "Persephone, Queen of the Underworld" for the last First Night celebration, Flom's divination wheel used in that performance, which takes up the center of the gallery's rotunda, is an aptly included piece here for its ingenious incorporation of a multitude of themes even if Flom won't always be available to use it to divine New Year's resolutions like she did for revelers during First Night.

And speaking of themes, if any one particular theme seems to rise above the rest in this show, it is works of a spiritual nature. That is more than evident in such profoundly moving paintings as Ray Forquer's "Sojourner," which is a highly detailed portrait of an African king, and Terri Perpich's "The Green Velvet Cape," a painting of a not so stereotypical angel.

Although Perpich is more direct than most in addressing the spiritual side, she still is not as bold as Shawn Quinlan, whose quilt "Who would Jesus bomb?" is sure to raise some eyebrows.

A small colorful quilt depicting Jesus between two mushroom clouds and warplanes, it's quite a jump from his earlier work "What would Jesus drive?", which he showed in last year's Annual Exhibtion.

Although it is one of the few works to take on a political twist -- Michael Smithhammer's ceramic piece "Little Soldier," which has Islamic-inspired surface patterns, may be the only other one -- it is not the only piece that will cause visitors to raise an eyebrow or two.

Christine McCullough's colored pencil drawing, "The Point," will no doubt leave most guessing as to why the artist has chosen to portray bunnies in such maniacal fashion. And just as strange, Aline Shader offers up a most unusual harlequin in "The Entertainer," an oil painting of an unusually clad performer who boldly stares at the viewer as if mad.

Many of the remaining works are just as engaging, making this reviewer wonder whether this "New Members Exhibition" is any indication of the kind of work we will be seeing in the organization's upcoming 94th Annual Exhibition, which is scheduled to open in July at Carnegie Mellon University's Regina Gouger Miller Gallery.

If so, it should be very interesting indeed.

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