A new exhibition at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling called “Conduit” features the work of Artist Doug Safranek.
Safranek paints using a style known as “egg tempera,” which had its heyday in the middle ages. The style is known for its paint pigments, water and egg yolks.
Safranek used the style to paint 30 members of the Sugar Hill, Harlem community, using digital photos as his guide.
“You can sit here and meditate on the stories of these incredible community members as you gaze at their faces,” Doug Safranek said.
The exhibition was conceived by Murray Nossel, who runs the World Mother Storytelling Project. There are portraits of 30 Harlem community members, and 10 stories of mothers or mother figures, along with a musical score.
“One of the things that we really wanted to do was make those narratives come alive, so as you are looking at the portraits you hear all of these stories, but you are not sure whose story it is, and you realize those stories can be anyone’s story,” Charlene Melville, executive director of Broadway Housing Communities, said. “We have so many similarities between our histories and our experiences.”
The museum, which is celebrating 10 years of welcoming visitors, was established by the organization Broadway Housing Communities, which is under the Sugar Hill Initiative. This created affordable housing, a state-of-the-art pre-school and a contemporary art museum for children, all under one roof. The space created for intergenerational access to art.
“Where children and adults can look at art, talk about it, be engaged in the creative process and work with artists as well,” Melville said.
“Conduit” is on display through Aug. 18.
