Phyllis Hjorth’s Community Portraits Come Home to Hudson

On a recent afternoon at Columbia-Greene Habitat for Humanity, Sam Stegeman, director of marketing and programs, led me to a back corner of the site’s warehouse, where several large canvases lay hidden beneath a tarp. She lifted the tarp, unveiling a gallery of anonymous faces: mostly children—some grinning, some frowning, some gazing at the viewer in wary discernment. All were residents of Hudson 25 years ago; and, in all likelihood, some of them still are.

Stegeman explained that these paintings fell into the hands of Habitat for Humanity a few years ago. The organization could’ve sold them to raise funds for local housing, but Stegeman—realizing their value as community documents – sensed that they deserved a different future. “We were looking for the right place to share them,” she says. “And I think we’ve found it.” (The paintings will be given to identified subjects at the close of the exhibition; unidentified paintings will be sold on behalf of Habitat for Humanity.)

That place is The Spark of Hudson, where Habitat will co-present "Hudson 1997-2003: Portraits by Phyllis Hjorth," now through December 19.

Hjorth, a Hudson-based artist who moved to the area 30 years ago, initially arrived on Warren Street when the city was still mired in a stretch of economic stagnation. “It was a very different city than it is now,” Hjorth remembers. “Yet even then I knew it was special.”

A painting by Phyllis Hjorth. Photo by Amber Marlow.

She rented a storefront and converted it into her studio. One day, she noticed a group of local kids walking down the sidewalk. “They were laughing, playing around,” she says. “But I felt they weren’t being seen. They were part of the community, but they were taken for granted.”

Hjorth approached these children, and asked if she could take a photo of them. Thus began a five-year project as Hjorth photographed Hudson residents and turned her photos into vibrant, life-sized oil portraits.

As she completed them, Hjorth would display these portraits in her studio window. The same neighborhood kids who she felt were not being seen would walk by, and see themselves.

A painting by Phyllis Hjorth. Photo by Amber Marlow.

This upcoming exhibition will be the first time that all the paintings in Hjorth’s series are shown together. Its curators hope that by making the paintings public, community members will come forward, identify themselves, and claim the artwork.

And in fact, a Facebook post has already brought a few of the subjects to light. Roslyn Coleman, a North Carolina-based health care worker and small businesswoman, was taken aback when she got a message about the exhibit from her sister, Thearse McCalmon. “I almost cried when I saw the painting again,” she says. “It brought back a lot of memories.”

McCalmon, a Schenectady-based educator and former New York State Senate candidate, originally moved to Hudson during a personal crisis, and gave birth to her child in that city. Coleman and her children joined them shortly after, and, a few years later, the two families were sitting on a Front Street stoop when a strange woman came by and asked if she could take their picture. This proved to be slightly challenging. “My son kept running away,” McCalmon says with a laugh.

A painting by Phyllis Hjorth. Photo by Amber Marlow.

Likewise, Coleman’s daughter would not sit still. “That’s why I’m holding her around the neck,” she says, alluding to their awkward poses in the painting.

Through the years, this episode remained a point of reference for the family. “We would joke that our faces were probably hanging in some rich person’s house,” McCalmon says.

Now, the painting is coming home to the women who posed for it. To both sisters, it’s an opportunity to reflect on their personal growth. “I knew then that Hudson had potential,” says McCalmon, who worked for several years on a revitalization program in the city. “It’s meaningful to see what it's become. I will always be invested in my community.”

Likewise, Coleman is struck to remember who she was when the painting was made. “I had no education,” she says. “And look at where I am now.

“This is about my journey. This painting is part of my history.”