Picture Post Part I--Brooklyn

So this last weekend I went to an arts festival in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. As New York continually gentrifies, the artists keep pushing farther afield to find the next cheap, gritty, and as-yet-undiscovered neighborhood. Bushwick in Brooklyn is one such neighborhood. Prior to this weekend the only stories I had heard of Bushwick were from a friend whose apartment there had been broken into something like 3 times in the space of a year, so I was interested in seeing what the neighborhood actually had to offer. The way the festival was organized, I ended up getting a much more intimate look at Bushwick than I had expected--artists displayed their paintings, drawings or photography on their own apartment or studio walls, so the most interesting part of the festival was seeing into all these artists' homes (not to mention the free alcohol that was generally on offer).

One festival stop stands out in my mind. It was an apartment shared by two young women, quintessential young artists. Their small but brightly painted apartment was decorated with photography, paintings, and mobiles, and they each sat on a different couch, chain smoking in front of a coffee table displaying an antique type writer. One of them was clearly on something--she claimed not to know what was going on.

From that stop, we visited an artist in his workshop who made installations from found objects. After that, we proceeded to rooftop exhibit, which turned out to be a great place to end up since it offered views of Manhattan like this:


I believe if I lived in this building, I would spend all of my time on the roof. There was some very friendly graffiti to boot: