New York’s art scene is having a senior moment.
Since few painters and sculptors can afford SoHo lofts these days, the city is offering them a hip replacement: free studio space in senior centers.
Fifty artists will be awarded residencies along with a $1,500 stipend and supplies for six months starting in January under Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide (SPARC), a city program being funded by the NEA. Applications are due at the end of the month.
“We developed SPARC to connect senior center residents with high quality artistic programming, and to help artists in need of affordable workspace,” said Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin.
Photographer Daryl-Ann Saunders was one of 12 artists who participated in an unfunded pilot version of the program last year, and was given the chance to set up a photo studio in the meeting room of the Diana H. Jones Senior Center in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood.
“If someone had told me I’d have a studio in a senior center, I’d say ‘are you kidding?” Saunders said. “When I was young I was afraid of seniors – to me they were from Mars, but then as you get old you realize, ‘someday…’”
Saunders was a perfect match for the program as she had already been working on a portrait project on the “Pioneers of Bushwick,” looking at those who’ve lived in the neighborhood since at least 1975.
But until she was given space at the center, she said it had been hard to find subjects as she was viewed as “too much of an outsider.”
“But now I could approach some of those people and say I have a residency at the Diana Jones Senior Center – it sends out the message I am volunteering, I am contributing,” she said.
Senior center member Aida Irizarry, 60, who posed and provided oral histories for Saunders along with her mother Blanca, 79, said she was thrilled to have an artist in residency.
“We don’t want people to just think Bushwick is a dangerous place,” she said. “I am more shy about being on camera than my mother — we feel like now we will be famous.”
The artists are expected to provide 40 to 60 hours of programming at the senior center in exchange for the space and the stipend. The centers will each receive $1,000 as part of the program.
The Department of Cultural Affairs will host a Q&A session about the program on September 20.
jolshan@nypost.com