Dorothy, a resident at Serviam Gardens senior living facility, sits at one of the rectangular tables spaced across the room while attending art class. Working from a photograph, she carefully delineates the outline of a building in pencil, the lines light enough so that they will disappear when she colors the image later.

“I was going through some problems and I didn’t know how to solve them and somebody introduced me to painting,” Dorothy explains. She does not break eye contact with her work to talk, but something about her posture suggests attentiveness. “I learned to like it and I can’t stop doing it now.”

Recent budget cuts have eliminated funding to many arts programs across New York City, but Chashama, an arts nonprofit organization founded by Anita Durst, has partnered with local community groups to fill the breach.

“We’re starting to reach out to other property owners to see if we can expand the program,” Durst told the Norwood News.

Chashama (Farsi for “to have vision”) has four main programs, including Space to Connect, which enables classes like the one Dorothy attends to exist. Drawing from a $150,000 grant, Chashama and their partners provide classes on art, cooking, African dance, clay, and photography to school aged children and seniors in the Bronx and other parts of the city.

“It’s like a medicine for me,” Dorothy continues. “Like if I’m going through some changes and I do it, I put my whole self into it and I don’t think about it. I don’t have to go to the doctor. This is my doctor.”

In the Bronx, Space to Connect partners with Fordham-Bedford Housing and Community Services to provide The Bronx Arts Initiative, which engages eight borough artists in providing classes in dance and visual art for 130 to 180 participants each month in exchange for free studio space, access to the unused supply group Materials for the Arts, an art materials budget, and a stipend. The class Dorothy attends is taught by Charles Esperanza, a published children’s book illustrator, author, and muralist.

“If you just present a fun project to them, anyone can get something from it,” Esperanza says.

His teaching methods are fluid. While he designs the curriculum beforehand, he will adjust projects according to what each class “enjoys doing or what they need to do.” In exchange for sharing his skills with the community, Esperanza receives rent-free studio space.  “Before, I was working out of my apartment which you know was way too cramped. I couldn’t paint as big as I wanted. It was a mess.”

Esperanza says Space to Connect makes it easier to balance teaching with pursuing his own work and that the participants in his classes inspire him.  “Between teaching and doing your artwork outside can be difficult. But this makes it easier. Because they give you a space. It’s like I have this whole space I need to do my work.”

The importance of imagination is critical for Esperanza, who teaches the visual arts class at Serviam Gardens, as well as a class for children at West Farms, but says regardless of age, everyone is “kind of the same.”

Space to Connect assigns one participant per class the role of “resident artist,” giving them the chance to support the “Lead Artist” running the class. While Dorothy is the resident artist in her class at Serviam Gardens, all her classmates seem to feel similarly about the program. This should not be surprising, given that the therapeutic power of art is backed by science, with numerous studies concluding that art can heal.

Just behind Dorothy, three women sit at a table equally absorbed in their work. They are dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, with paint, paintbrushes, and a cup of water occupying the shared space between them.

“It’s not only recreation,” one says. “But it also makes you use your imagination.”

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.