This Sunday, the Museum at Eldridge Street will debut to the public a stained glass window that the artist Kiki Smith has conjured from blue, yellow, and pink-hued panes along with architect Deborah Gans. During a preview of the piece that the artist led in the 1887 former synagogue this afternoon, some scaffolding remained behind the glass, and the central, three-dimensional star was still being fabricated. But the general spirit of the work was in evidence: rife with five-pointed stars and made from around 1,200 individual pieces of glass, the work — which eschews traditional lead-based methods of bonding — reflects the look of the historical building while adding a colorful, lighthearted new spin.

Smith acknowledged that the project was something of a departure for her, since she her body of work is by and large focused on figurative representation. "My real interest is in working in spiritual space," Smith said, since it represents a locus for calm reflection, a "mental space in the world, within cities, within architecture." The artist stressed that she wanted to respect the landmark building, and certainly didn’t want to "inject my personal trip on it."

The artist contrasted the five-pointed stars in her design — which she termed very "American" stars — with the traditional six-pointed Star of David that forms an integral part of the building’s other stained glass windows. The circular frame of her window reflects the circle of the ceiling’s dome, she said, adding that the spiral motif Gans designed for the work also invoked the omphalos and Big Bang theory. In conceiving the design, Smith took into account the Lower East Side neighborhood's historical role as a home for Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Here, the stained glass window could be seen as "a statement of arriving," she said.

The work will be available to the public on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. as part of Open House New York. At noon, an "Artisans Roundtable" will be held, featuring those involved in the creation of the window, followed by a concert of Jewish folk music at 4:30 p.m.