Art connects.
For the past five months, high school students from Brooklyn Friends School’s art club and residents of The Watermark at Brooklyn Heights, a luxury senior living community, have been meeting once a month for an hour of collaborative art at the residence’s art studio.
The initiative, “Making Friends: Forging Intergenerational Connections through Art-Making,” is led by Elizabeth Deull, the art teacher at Brooklyn Friends Upper School, and aims to highlight the Quaker school’s mission to create community and build intergenerational connections.
Deull noticed the art studio during a tour of the facility with her father, who is now a resident at The Watermark, and thought it might provide an opportunity to volunteer one day. When Deull received an email from a resident whose grandson had attended Brooklyn Friends, suggesting that they display the students’ artwork at the studio, it felt like “Kismet,” she told Brooklyn Paper.
“This is the universe telling me that something has to happen,” she said.
The email sparked the idea for collaborative art sessions, where students and residents have conversations and exchange stories while creating artwork side by side.
Deull explained that the first session of the curriculum was an icebreaker with coffee and a collaborative poem-writing session; the second was a continuous-line portrait session; and the next launched the Mandala project, in which participants were encouraged to recall a moment in their lives they wanted to revisit.
“That was the prompt for the conversation, and it was setting an intention for the Mandala in which they were free to do whatever they wanted within that space. But the tone was set by this beautiful story they wanted to share with each other,” Deull explained, noting that the students and residents formed a deep relationship during the sessions, which are filled with long conversations while nurturing artistic expression.
“It doesn’t seem like a 16-year-old and a 90-year-old would have a lot to talk about, but they’ve had beautiful, long, chatty conversations where I have to tell them that it’s 3:30, you’ve got to move along. You have to go, and [the conversation] continues,” Deull said. “So I think the beauty of connection in unexpected places and just sort of working outside of your comfort zone creates deeper empathy for the world.”
When Brooklyn Paper visited the art session on April 17, the studio’s tables were decorated with flower bouquets for a botanical watercolor portrait project. The students and residents worked in pairs, selecting flowers that spoke to them, then painting them on a white scroll side by side while sharing personal experiences.
Brooklyn Friends student Darwin Chavarria Menendez, leader of the school’s art club, and Watermark resident Anne Bauso have been a team since the first session.
Darwin said the sessions offered an opportunity to build connections beyond the student community and learn more about others.
“I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned from just [listening to Anne] is just to enjoy life and just to be in the moment, and have fun,” Darwin told Brooklyn Paper.
Bauso, who shared with Darwin that she saw “Hamilton” three weeks after its debut — the ticket was $25 — during their collaborative botanical watercolor session, said the most important part was meeting people with a wonderful heart like Darwin.
“He is so wonderful. He is such a listener. He picks up on everything I say and wants to know more,” Bauso said.
Bonnie Ford Woit, an abstract painter whose work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, said she has learned new ways to approach art from the young people, whom she described as “very talented.”
“They have good ideas. It’s back and forth, believe me,” the 95-year-old said. “I like being with the young people. They have a different way of looking at things; very honest and fresh. I love them.”
Ninth-grader Rebekka Bek, who focuses on fantastical sketches, worked on the mandala project with Ford Woit during the last session. Ford Woit showed her how to paint without planning ahead and to include artistic mishaps in the work.
“I never thought of painting like that. And I really liked it when we did that,” Rebekka said.
She told Brooklyn Paper she hadn’t interacted with many seniors before the project, but because of the sessions, her compassion for them had “definitely” grown.
“I feel like a lot of people think that when you’re older, you can’t do anything anymore, but these people still have fun, and they like their lives; it’s nice.”
Kathy Thoresen, a Watermark resident, said she enjoyed the mandala session. She interpreted a memory from her childhood in the Midwest, when she and her sister had to climb a long driveway in deep snow, for the art piece.
“It’s always been a very vivid memory. So it was fun to make it into a drawing in some way, and we just talked the whole time. It’s so nice to be sharing an experience and talking about that and everything else at the same time. I really enjoyed it,” Thoresen said.
Student Nina Skelton said she already receives guidance from her grandparents, and the interaction with residents almost felt like gaining new grandparents.
“I get even more advice, and just spending time with such amazing people who have really cool lives, and [who] are still very interesting, is really fun,” Nina said.
Ellis Deull, Elizabeth Deull’s father, said students often approached him to share how much fun they had collaborating with residents. He said the event was an opportunity for community building that does not happen every day.
“This is a great idea to bring together the collaboration of two diverse age groups with different points of view, different goals, different strategies, and very little experience, and just the combination of those things, including the lack of experience, makes for more experimental doing, and people seem to be having fun,” Ellis Deull said.
Fiona White, Celebrations and Transportation Director at The Watermark, said it has been “beautiful” to watch the collaboration, which will culminate in an art show in May, between high school students and residents as they exchange art styles and trends.
“I think it’s very important for them to have that communication with the younger generation and help guide them. Art has changed so much, I feel like, over time. So it’s really interesting to see them show each other how they work, or their different styles,” White said, noting that many of the residents were artists. “It’s nice to see them be able to tap back into that creative side of themselves.”
