Local kids and artists smile for the camera at Ocean Hill Art Sanctuary on MacDonough Street. — Photos by Rachel Eisley
Ocean Hill Art Sanctuary, nestled in a building with a red arched door on a quiet stretch of MacDonough Street near the Halsey Street J, was a hub of creativity and community over the summer as emerging and established artists from round Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant converged on the space and hosted free Saturday art classes to get the creative juices flowing in local children aged 4 to 12.
The result? Glazed ceramic face masks with full lips and penetrating gazes, pink cats and brilliant blue supernovas made of papier-mâché, unselfconscious black and white photographic self-portraits taken using 35mm film cameras, and a painted collage of Brooklyn neighborhoods featuring Bushwick landmarks such as Fat Albert Warehouse, Woodhull Hospital, and McDonald’s.
Ocean Hill’s co-owner, artist Serge Limontas-Salisbury II, says the Sanctuary, which consists of a gallery and artist’s studio in the basement, with a trap door leading to a rambling garden, serves as a safe place to experience and create art.
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"Through the Sanctuary I hope to raise the visibility of artists like myself within the community with the hope that we could serve as examples to local children," he said.
On Saturday mornings, Limontas-Salisbury opened up the doors to the Sanctuary and hosted a ceramics class, with a grant funded by the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council, where he taught children the fundamentals of working with clay and fired their creations in his on-site kiln.
In the afternoons, photographer and BushwickBK arts reporter Rachel Eisley and her Carriage House Collective, which includes welder Julia Murray and piñata-maker Meg Keys of Llaves Designs, took over the space and introduced children to photography, papier-mâché, painting and drawing.
“The Collective is a group of young emerging artists interested in teaching art and volunteering, and gets its name from a converted carriage house in Bushwick where we’ve all lived or spent time in," she said. The group’s house, which has an outdoor mural painted by local street artists Nicholas D’Auria and Erik Burke, is a "quiet, creative oasis" among a landscape of apartment buildings, Eisley said.
Seeing the need for a free art program for local children who may not have the opportunity to explore their artistic side at public schools, Eisley successfully applied to the Negley-Flinn Foundation for a grant, administered by the Washington Arts Group.
"By having local artists teach the classes, I hoped to orchestrate a true sense of community between families who have lived in the area for a long time and emerging and established artist-residents" who have more recently arrived in the area, she said.
Vera Swinton, who participated in the afternoon art classes with her three sons, Amari, 10, Omar, 9, and Daniel, 4, describes her family as being "transformed" by the experience this summer at Ocean Hill. "It was truly a commitment to get there each Saturday, but to have art taught to my children by such a dedicated group of talented and giving artists felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity," she said. "To have the chance to make art in Brooklyn as a family was magical."
Asked what they liked best about the classes, Amari and Daniel agreed it was taking pictures and making piñatas, while Omar particularly enjoyed brainstorming and working on the collage.
Last month, the works of students from both classes were featured alongside art by the programs’ teachers in an exhibit at Ocean Hill, "Brooklyn Portraits."
The Carriage House Collective will hold free art classes again next summer and is getting involved in other community art projects as well, such as a puppet-making class to begin at Ocean Hill this fall.
For more information about the summer art programs and other projects, contact Serge Limontas-Salisbury II at Ocean Hill Art Sanctuary at oceanhillartsanctuary@hotmail.com or Rachel Eisley at photo.rachel@gmail.com.
