In Sheepshead Bay, Arts Classes Bring Community to Older Residents
Will citywide cuts to library funding announced last fall impact these vital cultural groups?
By Anna Oakes
On a late September afternoon last fall, a small but raucous group of women gathered at the Sheepshead Bay Public Library. The women, who ranged from their thirties to late seventies, were participating in a weekly class, “Create Beautiful Art for Your Home,” led by Sheepshead Bay resident and artist Oleg Ovcharkenko.
Ovcharkenko’s class is one of several cultural programs funded by a significant grant to the library in July from the office of Assemblyman Michael Novakhov, one of the few Republican representatives for Brooklyn. The class serves an essential function for Sheepshead Bay’s vulnerable and retired residents, many of whom are older immigrants who have long struggled to find community in Brooklyn. But despite the recent grant, sustained funding for the library has been difficult to raise, imperiling the future of classes like this one. The library’s funding challenges come on top of budget cuts announced this fall, which are already impacting libraries across the city.
On this day, Ovcharkenko was disgruntled. An oversight group connected to the grant — the “komissiya,” or “commission,” he joked — had stopped by earlier to inspect the progress of the class. In anticipation of the visit, a librarian had stuffed several weeks’ worth of construction materials, glue, shells, string, and half-finished art projects into all the corners of the room.
Nevertheless, Ovcharkenko and his students quickly got to work. Today’s goal was to construct an expressive cardboard baby monkey — a design that Ovcharkenko had created himself, of which he was particularly proud. But the students had their own priorities. Some were focused on finishing their projects from earlier weeks. One woman painted a small clay octopus. Another sprinkled sand on a lopsided papier-mache mouse. Karen Hill, a longtime resident of Sheepshead Bay, brought her own pieces of intricate, colorful beaded jewelry to show off to the class. Chatter and laughter soon filled the room.
Ovcharkenko’s students spoke glowingly, in a mix of Russian and English. Ovcharkenko is “serious, he’s very intelligent, very kind. He talks with everybody like a friend,” said Meri Atabegova, who immigrated from Georgia in 2010.
Ovcharkenko has had a long career in arts education and translation. He is originally from Uzbekistan, and led an arts program on Soviet television from Tashkent in the 1970s. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he was commissioned by the Red Cross to translate Western materials of citizenship, civic society, and humanitarianism to an Uzbek and recently post-Soviet readership.
Photo courtesy of Oleg Ovcharkenko. Ovcharkenko is on the left.
Ovcharkenko’s son, then his wife, moved to Brooklyn in 2001. Alone in Tashkent, Ovcharkenko followed his family to Brooklyn in 2010. But life in the United States was not easy. In Tashkent, Ovcharkenko could have expected a pension following his retirement. In the United States, he started from scratch.
“If I had realized I would work until my last breath, I might have stayed [in Tashkent],” he said.
Despite Ovcharkenko’s lifelong commitment to arts education, he struggled to find work that matched his professional expertise. “I came, I could not find any job that I wanted to have, like [a] teacher in college. Also at my age, with my not-very-good English…” he trailed off. Ovcharkenko eventually managed to find a job teaching Russian, through fairy tale puppets, to second-generation children at a local Russian Orthodox church. For the last thirteen years, too, he has worked as an art instructor for people with disabilities, through the AHRC.
In 2019, Ovcharkenko first caught the eye of Sheepshead Bay supervising librarian Svetlana Negrimovskaya, through a puppetry workshop he was leading at the library. His teaching, patience and creativity stood out to her: “Oleg has so many ideas. It’s not just an art piece. It’s a whole story. He can bring music to the story, rhyme, theatrical script. Out of nothing, [he makes] something.”
Ovcharkenko confirmed this approach. “I am like garbage man,” he said, referencing his collection of eclectic and scavenged art supplies.
Negrimovskaya worked with Ovcharkenko to launch a volunteer art class at the library. The classes, she said, bring a much-needed service: “helping seniors and adults to stay creative, to forget about their depressions, to feel active.”
But the library has faced difficulties in recent years. “[There are] so many obstacles, so many issues,” said Negrimovskaya. Some problems are structural: for three years the air conditioning at the branch was broken, until funds were raised this summer.
The citywide cuts to library funding, announced last fall, have already limited the library’s hours and ability to provide services, according to Fritzi Bodenheimer, press officer for the Brooklyn Public Library. The Sheepshead Bay branch, like libraries across the city, has ended its Sunday service. Bodenheimer says libraries’ collections budget has also been impacted.
The library’s finances may be undergoing a revival, however, despite the recent cuts. In July 2023, the Sheepshead Bay branch was earmarked for a $40,000 grant from the office of Assemblyman Michael Novakhov, one of the few Republican representatives for South Brooklyn. That grant has allowed Negrimovskaya to work on expanding the library’s cultural and professional offerings — and to pay Ovcharkenko a modest amount.
The library serves another purpose, too. Loneliness faces many residents in Sheepshead Bay, which has a higher percentage of over-65 and foreign-born residents than the rest of the city.
Immigrants from poorer Eastern and Central European countries are accustomed to living in multigenerational households and more closely-knit communities. Zulfiya, who declined to share her last name, immigrated from Uzbekistan in the late 1990s. In the United States, she said, “it’s like, ‘I’m independent, I rely on myself.’ Everyone is Americanized, everyone lives separately. Once you get older you realize that your sense of community, hanging out with people is much more important. But it’s hard to find a community.”
Many of Ovcharkenko’s students are retired or have lost their jobs. Since retiring in February, Meri Atabegova has struggled to feel useful and connected. “I’m retired. It’s a new country, I don’t know nobody. I not communicate too many people. I would like more interesting things to do. If somebody needs something, I would be glad [to help].”
Originally from Lvo, Ukraine, Larisa Klauzov lost her job at the Broadway League in 2020. The library’s classes “changed my life upside-down,” she said.
Now, colorful artworks from Ovcharkenko’s classes are displayed throughout the building. Klauzov gave a tour: intricate cut flowers, picasso-style collage portraits, papier-mache dioramas.
Even Ovcharkenko feels isolated, at times. His art classes are a far cry from the prominence he enjoyed in Uzbekistan, and the art center he dreams of opening. He has struggled to find a community of like-minded artists. Even so, the classes help.
“Here I cannot find that job, but my ability, it is going to be useful for other people, and that is good for me. I don’t feel myself stranger in this country. I need people like me, I can communicate with them. They understand who I am. If I have friends it’s good, because living lonely is very stressful.”
In Ovcharkenko’s class, Karen Hill finds something she has been missing. “When you retire, your structures are pulled out from under you and you have to create a new life for yourself. And you go and dig deep into what you liked when you were a kid, and you try to expand on that. Libraries have become community centers.”
Says Ovcharkenko: “thanks to God, America has such a place like a library. Because it is free to visit, it does not [charge] money. Just come and enjoy.”
This article was originally published on Medium.
Anna Oakes is a freelance journalist based in New York City. You can find her on Twitter @a_lkoakes or contact her at annaoakes@gmail.com