An Art Teacher Preserves the History of Harlem, While Creating Her Own Legacy

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Alice Mizrachi, an artist and longtime art teacher, in her studio in Harlem.

She was only 6 years old and a first grader at a Catholic school in Harlem. But stepping into an art class at St. Aloysius taught by Alice Mizrachi steered Chayse Sheppard’s life at a young age in ways she did not fully appreciate until she was older.

“Ms. Mizrachi made me love art,’’ said Ms. Sheppard, 18, who is now a freshman at Buffalo State College majoring in fashion design and merchandising. “I found myself always excited for art class. In elementary school I didn’t feel challenged, but Ms. Mizrachi made everything a learning experience.’’

Ms. Sheppard is just one of many young people who have walked into Ms. Mizrachi’s classrooms knowing little about art and have walked out with a passion that has helped shape their lives. “Ms. Mizrachi showed us the true meaning of art,’’ said Gabriel Henderson, 18, another former student who is a freshman in a fine arts program at LaGuardia Community College.

Ms. Mizrachi, 36, herself an accomplished painter who has built a career on the collages she creates, was born and raised in Queens to parents who had immigrated from Israel. Ms. Mizrachi, the youngest of three children, remembers growing up in a creative family.

“We made everything,’’ she said, explaining that her mother made her sweaters and scarves and that her father repaired everything around the house, including appliances and the roof. “It wasn’t like we were going out buying really expensive stuff.”

At Cardoza High School in Bayside, Queens, Ms. Mizrachi delved into her creativity and found herself drawn to art classes. Her art teacher encouraged her to apply to art colleges.

Her parents did not agree, believing she should choose a more financially pragmatic profession. She applied to art schools anyway and attended the Parsons School of Design on a full scholarship.

After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts, Ms. Mizrachi went to work as an animator at Alfy.com, a company that makes online games.

“It wasn’t what I was looking for, but I took the job and did it grudgingly,” Ms. Mizrachi said. After two years she was laid off, but was given a generous severance package and also received unemployment benefits.

“I had a year where I was getting paid and I could really figure it out,” she said.

Ms. Mizrachi, who was trying to find a way to be an artist while supporting herself, had an inkling of what she wanted to do next.

“I already knew that I liked to work with youth,” she said. “All of my work at the time was very socially engaged, environmental, political and very socially aware.”

She got a job with Creative Classrooms Visual Arts Program, an organization that provides art classes to children from low-income families and helps fill the void in many schools that eliminated art programs because of budget constraints. Ms. Mizrachi was assigned to work at St. Aloysius and Corpus Christi, also in Harlem.

“It was kind of good that they took the cookie cutter art teacher out of the school because now real artists can teach the students,” she said. “We thought that was a negative thing when they were cutting the arts, but something really positive came out of that.”

She eventually started working full time at St. Aloysius, where she worked for 10 years.

While at St. Aloysius, Ms. Mizrachi met Russell Goings, a former professional football player and an entrepreneur who was on the board of the Studio Museum in Harlem. One of Mr. Goings’s friends was Romare Bearden, a well-known Harlem artist who made famous collages, including Eastern Barn, which hangs in the Whitney Museum.

Mr. Goings owns a vast collection of work by Mr. Bearden that has never been shown publicly, and he thought Ms. Mizrachi could use the collection in her art curriculum.

Ms. Mizrachi and Mr. Goings agreed that, in return for access to his collection of Mr. Bearden’s work, she would teach her students about the artist and the history of Harlem.

“I vowed to Russell that I would help preserve the legacy,” Ms. Mizrachi said.

“I told him this is going to be one of my missions throughout my life, to preserve Bearden’s history and the Harlem culture and make sure it lives in a rich and authentic way,” she said.

Some of Mr. Bearden’s collection was already on display at St. Aloysius, and Ms. Mizrachi agreed to incorporate his work into her classes. She “put it in a better position to be revered, respected and available,” Mr. Goings said.

Ms. Mizrachi taught her students as much about Mr. Bearden as she could pack into a school year.

“They were doing plays about him doing collages and learning about the history of Harlem and what that looked like,’’ she said. “Not just during Black History Month but all year round.”

Anabel Frias, 18, a nursing student at the University of Buffalo, recalls how Ms. Mizrachi “would take us to draw landscapes around the parks.’’

Ms. Mizrachi showed Ms. Frias how to be creative. “I was so focused on studying, and that was the time for all of us to relax and grow,’’ she said. “Alice helped me with that.”

Ms. Henderson said Ms. Mizrachi helped boost her confidence. “When I first began drawing I felt very alone and unsure about my art,’’ she said.

Today Ms. Mizrachi still teaches in Harlem and occasionally shows her work overseas in Paris and Tel Aviv. She still paints murals around the city, most recently on 126th Street for an art festival.

Ms. Mizrachi, who started teaching this month at the Hi-ARTS organization in East Harlem, developed a curriculum built around “The Block,’’ a six-panel piece created by Mr. Bearden in 1971 that was inspired by the block where he lived on Lenox Avenue.

As far as her former students, she sees them as growing seeds that she planted.

“It’s beautiful; these are the beautiful trees that are flowering in front of me,” Ms. Mizrachi said. “It’s beautiful knowing that maybe one day they’ll do the same with someone that is younger, because it was done for them.”