At the Harlem River Houses, a public-housing complex in northern Manhattan, Sheryl Jones grimaced lightly as she watched a puppy relieve itself on a flagpole. “Now, that’s just disrespectful,” Jones, a sixty-one-year-old teacher who has lived in the complex for more than three decades, said. Next to her, Kim Dacres, a thirty-nine-year-old sculptor, scoffed. “If Winky was here,” she said, referring to her French bulldog, “he’d be tearing these skinny dogs up.”
Dacres, a Bronx native, had come to the houses to check in on her latest project, four abstract bronze busts—each five feet tall, depicting a Black woman—which were being installed around a central wading pool. ArtBridge, a local nonprofit, had tapped her for the project, and she planned around exhibitions in Paris and at Art Basel Miami Beach to take on the job.
These sculptures had been a long time coming. When the Harlem River Houses, an early Public Works Administration project, were built, in the nineteen-thirties, this magazine’s architecture critic, Lewis Mumford, travelled up to 151st Street to write about them. He singled out “the trees set about the ample open spaces in the fashion of the Luxembourg Gardens; and the handsome sculpture by Heinz Warneke, the penguins round about the central wading pool.” He added that the sculptures “will be improved in finish by being handled and climbed over by children.”
By the late seventies, however, the penguins had all but disappeared: one had been beheaded; another two, stolen.
“They took them away, and said, ‘Oh, we’re going to bring them back—we have to restore them,’ ” Jones said. “And they brought back these hollow terra-cotta versions—the spirit was gone.”
Dacres, who had on a white hoodie and a black beret, nodded. “The new animals were being used for more nefarious activities, in terms of storage of ‘goods,’ ” she said, with a knowing look. (Frank Lucas, a local drug kingpin, was known for using the neighborhood’s nooks and crannies to hide stashes.) No one seemed to know what happened to Warneke’s wrestling-bear statues, which had also adorned the public space.
When Jones was growing up, in Brooklyn, she spent summers at the Harlem River Houses with her father and her siblings. Pointing toward a playground, she said, “My dad used to play basketball there with Lew Alcindor,” referring to the N.B.A. star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “Lew was real tall, but he wasn’t a great basketball player, so my dad and his friends taught him the hook shot. That ended up being his signature move.”
Jabbar and other local legends are depicted in a new mural by the southwestern entrance. Jones’s son William, who grew up playing tennis at the complex’s court, is in there, too. “The all-Black American Tennis Association used to hold matches just down the street,” Jones said.
The pair walked toward the wading pool, which was dry and empty. “The penguin statues used to be right here,” Jones said. “When I was growing up, all the grandparents would sit outside with us.”
“That was a big part of my vision for the sculptures,” Dacres said, of her stately busts. “The four of them are kind of the keepers of the playground. I could almost hear people saying to their kids, ‘Oh, as long as you can see these sculptures, I can see you.’ ”
Dacres had made prototypes out of strips of bicycle tires; these were cast in bronze to create the final installation. “I’ve been collecting them every Tuesday since 2017—Tire Tuesdays,” she said. “I pick them up off the street, or from bicycle shops in Harlem, and now I have hundreds in my studio.”
The busts Dacres created represent two women, whom she calls Ariel and Marci Marie. “Ariel has this Bantu-knot hair style,” she said. “I wanted to pay homage to communities that I can’t name but that I know I come from. And Marci Marie is named after my mom.” She added, “That’s why she has rollers in her hair.”
The new designs weren’t immediately popular with the Harlem River Houses community. An original plan to make them fountains was struck down. “We were, like, ‘We don’t want our children playing in the water coming out of these heads!’ ” Jones said, laughing. “ ‘You know that looks like vomit, right?’ ”
With time, however, the residents have come around. For one thing, Dacres visits frequently; her studio is ten minutes away. “Sometimes you see sculptures and you’re, like, ‘How did they get the money for this?’ ” Jones asked. “But these feel special.”
“It’s like Erykah Badu said,” Dacres replied. “ ‘Keep in mind that I’m an artist—and I’m sensitive about my shit!’ ” ♦
