A Boom Grows in Brooklyn
By James Kalm
Word Up Williamsburg: there’s another artsy neighborhood in Brooklyn that seems to be gaining attention. A whole section of South Brooklyn (just south of Downtown) has finally achieved the distinction of getting its own art world moniker "Smith-Lantic", dubbed as such by that busy artnet reviewer Stephen Maine. This area hasn’t seen this kind of attention since H. P. Lovecraft (no Brooklyn booster he) wrote "…with dirty highways climbing the hill from the warves to that higher ground where decayed lengths of Clinton and Court Street lead off towards Borough Hall." in "The Horror at Red Hook." Now I may not be the fastest on the draw with the snazzy names, but having lived in the nabes for well over twenty years I’ll attempt to make up for it with some back story and local history.
The area under discussion is actually at the crux of several neighborhoods, each having it’s own unique artistic presence and players. Within half a mile you have Brooklyn Heights with the venerable Rotunda Gallery (so named because it was originally housed in Borough Hall’s main rotunda.) Proceeding down Court Street into Cobble Hill is the Belanthi Gallery, operated by Paulette Hios and open to the public for over twenty-seven years. This space, a neighborhood institution, features painting, sculpture, and graphics as well as music recitals, performance, and poetry readings.
If one wishes to face the "horror," Van Brunt Street in Red Hook has longtime resident Kentler International Drawing Space, a small gallery which has exposed many local, national, and international artists work, and features guess what… drawing. A more recent addition, Diesel Gallery, is a space affiliated with the Ridge Street Gallery, and directed by Stuart Nicholson. Diesel presents an eclectic mix of independently curated shows as well as grassroot productions by local artists. This neighborhood has also traditionally presented the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition show. This massive production is worth visiting just to see the interiors of the Beard Street Civil War era warehouses on the piers, where over the last fifteen years hundreds of local and regional artists have displayed their works.
The bottom of Smith Street peters out at the Gowanus Canal, we head north and enter Caroll Gardens. The www.gallerythe.org, is a unique combination of virtual Internet gallery, and street level display window exhibition space. Located on the corner of Smith and Carol, gallerythe has been in operation since spring 2001, and provides a lively shot of energy to this local with its provocative window arrays. Resident curators Koan-Jeff Baysa, Michael Fabian, and Valerie Kelemen have a taste that veers towards sci-fi and techno formalism, but they encourage proposals from independent curators and artists. Past exhibitions have included "Paint" with Lori Ortiz and Gilbert Hsiao, "Dark Science" with Stephen Oliver, Bill Byrne, and Fred Flisher, and "Threads" with Pedro Elias Cruz-Castro, Kay Gordon, and Sally Gill.
A few doors north is the David Allen Gallery. Featuring the furnishings and furniture of Herman Miller as well as other classic modern designers like Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, and Ishamu Noguchi, David Allen also shows some of Brooklyn’s most energetic and engaged artists in a homelike presentation rather than a "white box" setting. Tattfoo Tan was displaying selections from "Secret Garden" during a recent visit. These sparse and elegant paintings, mostly monochromatic grounds with colorful linear clusters, seem a perfect foil to the sleek household fixtures. Other artists exhibited include the works of our neighborhood’s own "advocates of Minimalism" Rossana Martinez and husband Matthew Deleget, as well as expressionist Jennifer Ross.
Staying on Smith Street but closer to the Atlantic Avenue intersection is what the New York Times has called "a high-tech funhouse", the MicroMuseum. This storefront space specializes in the conjunction of art and technology, combining performance, dance, and music with solar powered cyber art and video. Founded in 1986 by William and Kathleen Laziza, The MicroMuseum functions as a laboratory for the work and wickedly inventive collaborations of the Lazizas. This venue has rightly achieved worldwide recognition for its progressive research and work in advanced medias as well as for their outreach to the community as a whole. They also produce an independent TV program "Spontaneous Combustion" which features new artists and is broadcast monthly on Brooklyn Community Access Television.
Around the corner heading east on Atlantic is Boerum Hill, recently portrayed in Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, and Fortress of Solitude. To paraphrase Charlotta Kotik at a recent discussion on the "Working in Brooklyn" exhibit, "Brooklyn is not such a new phenomenon…long before these recent developments, [in Williamsburg] there were always intelligent artists living all over Brooklyn. This borough is larger than life." Indeed, David Smith had his metal shop near the foot of Atlantic Avenue until he moved upstate. His chum and fellow Ab-Exer Adolph Gottlieb, lived for years nearby in Brooklyn Heights. This strip of Atlantic known for its Lebanese food stores, Oriental carpet shops, and antique dealers now is entering the realm of gallery district.
Axelle Fine Arts is located in a beautiful Art Deco building at 312 Atlantic, (Axelle Fine Arts has a network of galleries in Soho, San Francisco, and New Orleans. They do high-end graphics producing editions for local art stars like Inka Essenhigh and Matthew Barney.) while most of the building is dedicated to the limited edition printing business, the ground floor space is now being used as a contemporary gallery. Luther Davis, director and master printer, is interested in developing a serious program of exhibitions. Their new season began with a group show called "Crossing the Bridge" reviewed by Benjamin La Rocco in last months Rail.
Continuing east to 372 Atlantic is the Bruno Marina Gallery. This is the brainchild of Rico Espinet, an artist and RISD grad who began business in the neighborhood with his design studio "Rico." In conversation I asked Espinet why Atlantic Avenue and not Soho or Williamburg? "This is the epicenter of Brownstone Brooklyn. There is unprecedented development that rivals the last great phase of growth a century ago before Brooklyn became a part of New York City. Williamsburg is just ‘too cool’ for me, too much like the ‘East Village.’ I want to work with art and artists that are sustained, developed, and understand quality and craft. I’d like to have a mixed program, something that doesn’t just focus on young artists." There’s also the mention of liking the fact that he’s "set apart" and feeling like a pioneer in this locality. Some of the artists in the summer group show include: Joe Fyfe, with a pair of subtly simplified abstractions on burlap, monochrome encaustics by Karen Revis, plastic sculptures by Lisa Beck, photographs by Ernesto Pujol, Eric Weeks, and Polly Apfelbaum, portraitist Peter Seidler and, "Working in Brooklyn" alumni Marisa Telleria, Susan Rabinowitz, John Berens, Carolanna Parlato,
As the environs of the Smith-Lantic district have grown, DUMBO (District Under the Manhattan Bridge), that once vital venue, has shrank. Metaphor Contemporary Art at 382 Atlantic is a refugee from DUMBO. Julian Jackson and Rene Lynch operated the gallery in their loft there for three years and spent four months preparing the Atlantic Street space for their "Grand Re-opening." This is a unique space with 17-foot ceilings and a mezzanine gallery accessible by spiral staircase. The debut show by Chuck Yuen showed off both the airy space of the gallery and Chuck’s painterly figurative allegories to mutually wonderful advantage. Jackson also has a positive view of the new developments. "Rene and I are both painters, but during the nineties people weren’t showing that much painting. That’s why we decided to focus on it. Because we’re living and working in the same region, seeing the development, like the renovation of the Brooklyn Museum, we’d like to see this become a walking destination. We like the energy of this part of town, not only its artistic energy but its entrepreneurial energy, too. Brooklyn is like a collection of small towns. This area with its shops and richness of life reminds us of old Soho. The G train connects us with Williamsburg so we aren’t that far from other art communities. We’ve been getting over 150 people in over the weekends, and probably a lot of them don’t go to galleries. We feel like we’re ambassadors for art here."
You can never tell how things like this new confabulation will work out. Ultimately "it’s the economy stupid." People will go on trying to make art, galleries will try to show art, but eventually it’s the real-estate people who cash in on the energy and bring about the changes that cause the ebb and flow of our little cultural estuary. To quote Thomas Nozkowski when asked what young artists should do to make it in the art world he said simply "survive." Brooklyn, as always, will survive.
