At Billyburg
Andres Jauregui
call it “Billyburg”. Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s fabled treeless garden of hip, is
not as gray as one might expect. Toy–sized maples and green ginkgoes garnish
the ruddy urban fa�ade of brown, red and yellow brick. Almost every building
has a stoop. Television antennae spike the three and four–story skyline, and on
a clear day, one can see the spires of cathedrals and the smokestacks of
long–abandoned factories in the distance. Bicycles and scooters are chained to
nearly every pole, lamppost and parking meter in sight. At odd corners one can
smell the aroma of smoked kielbasa or baking bread. Although only the East
River lies between them, the atmosphere in Williamsburg is dramatically
different from that of Manhattan. Ask any artist and they will tell you that is
exactly what they like about living in Williamsburg.
For
close to 30 years, artists have lived and worked in this metropolis, and
progressively, taken over an area once the domain of machine shops, automotive
plants and textile factories. In the pioneering years there was plenty of free
accommodation – most of its new inhabitants took to squatting in abandoned
factories and lofts – and fewer fiscal constraints meant artists were free to
experiment. The first prominent arts community to emerge in Brooklyn occupied
factory lofts in an area that became known as DUMBO or Down Under Manhattan
Bridge Overpass.
Meanwhile,
in nearby Williamsburg, it was not until the mid–1980s that the area began to
attract a high influx of artists. Influencing the cultural shift was a poor
economy, post-Wall Street stock market crash, combined with the precinct’s
undervalued facilities and close proximity to Manhattan – one of the biggest
art exhibition venues.
The
galleries that initially arrived on the scene tended to be alternative,
artist-run spaces with names such as Brand Name Damages and Minor Injury. In
1991, came the first commercial gallery, Test Site, under the direction of
Annie Herron, who is known for giving solo debuts in New York City to Mary
Ziegler, Lauren Szold, Ken Butler, Vince Gargiulo and Ebon Fisher. While the
Test Site years were short lived, as with many galleries at the time, their
legacy has been to form a credible and established arts scene, supported by New
York’s museum curators and collectors. With around 5,000 artists and 25
galleries, Williamsburg has become, albeit unintentionally, the new home to the
arts in New York City. “[The art scene in] Manhattan is very snooty and mean,
and hard to break into,” says Billie Curren, gallery assistant and Williamsburg
resident. “People are a lot more cooperative and willing to hear you out in
Williamsburg, so you’re more likely to get noticed.”
Galleries
in Williamsburg regularly exhibit works by local artists. One gallery started a
trend that became a monument to the caliber of work produced by neighborhood
artists. Pierogi, founded in 1994 in artist Joe Amrhein’s studio, made a
practice of displaying its flat files – large, flat filing cabinets
traditionally used to store work not on display – in open storage. Since the
arts space opened, twice a week, local artists have been coming in to have their
artwork assessed, and those works accepted, have joined the flat files. With
his wife Susan Swenson, Perogi has moved into a larger premise where visitors
can peruse the work of over 800 local artists at their leisure. Many galleries
have adopted this practice, and several dealers have opened galleries with work
discovered in Pierogi’s flat files.
Pierogi
is also known as a leader in innovative contemporary art, and its upcoming
exhibits attest to that. In January, installation artist Ward Shelly constructed
and inhabited a space within the gallery for a month. February’s exhibition
featured the drawings of performance artist Kim Jones, most famous for his
“Mudman” character. And in March, artist Brian Conley presents Decipherment
of Linear X, an
installation tracing the lineage of aggression from animal to man.
Although
barely a year old, Jack the Pelican Presents has already made a name for itself
with engaging installation pieces such as David Shapiro’s Consumed
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>, a two-year project in which the
artist saved and catalogued the food and pharmaceutical packaging from
everything he used, which he then displayed on grocery–store–style shelves in
the gallery. For its anniversary in January, Jack the Pelican Presents hosted a
four-woman exhibition featuring critically acclaimed artists Fariba Hajamadi,
Elena Herzog, Margaret Evangeline and Samm Kunce. There is also talk of a wild
show, early in the year, that features motorcycles suspended, chained to a
crossbeam overhead, with their motors left running on the ground, but director
Don Carroll promises nothing – yet.
Other
notable galleries in Williamsburg include Bellwether, most famous for its
prophetic All-American show which opened shortly before the September 11 terrorist attacks
in New York, and Roebling Hall, featuring a show of Pierogi founder, Joe
Amrhein’s work. Roebling Hall will showcase more local artists in the coming
months, including a solo exhibition by Dutch–born New York–based artist
Sebastiaan Bremer, who uses an intricate pointillist technique to create
ghostly images on photographs.
With
its galleries lauded, and its artists respected, Williamsburg has much to
celebrate. But ironically, there is a fear that this fame, so hard won, will
eventually destroy the area’s integrity like so many other districts around the
city – and the world – that have ‘blown up’. Such was the short, ugly story of
the art scene in New York City’s Meat Packing District. After the meat lockers
closed up shop in the early ‘90s, art galleries from nearby Chelsea moved in to
take advantage of the cheap rent. Fashion boutiques from the garment district
quickly followed, and with them came money; so much money that within a few
years, there were chic cafes, bistros and dog-grooming salons in places where
hewn sides of beef once hung. Rents rose higher and higher, and the galleries
closed. Now, only a handful remain, and while these galleries ought to be
rewarded for their resilience and noted for their collections, they cannot be
credited for adding anything new to the New York art scene.
There
are some bright spots, but for the most part, galleries in the MPD are more
like museums – they display the work of deceased artists, old New York
favorites like Warhol and Lichtenstein. Visit Wooster Projects for your pop art
fix, and Long Fine Art to see abstract impressionist prints and lithographs.
“Artists end up victims of their own success, which is a drag,” said Steve
Cannon, director of the Tribes Gallery in East Village, New York’s historically
bohemian precinct. “People love living where the artists live. Wherever the
artists go, if they’re successful, the money will follow.” This is, of course,
true and has already happened to a degree in Williamsburg. There are hipsters,
musicians and college students milling about the bars. Among the Vespas and
bikes on the road, you will find BMWs. Fashion boutiques have opened along
Bedford Avenue in the past year, and their presence has been felt through
climbing rents.
But
for whatever reason, Williamsburg’s ‘explosion’ has been more of a din. At the
very least, one can expect the process to be stalled by the presence of
resident artists. While the MPD was almost without exception a gallery space,
Williamsburg has a strong community that can fight for what it has created. At
the moment, believes Swenson, the arts community will spread further into
Brooklyn’s pockets. “It will be hard for something quite as solid as
Williamsburg to emerge because it is just such a concentrated space that had
quite a lot of time to develop and become really saturated. But at the same
time, we tend to think that the gallery scene in Williamsburg and other parts
of Brooklyn (like DUMBO) are a gathering point for artists further out in
Brooklyn and Queens.”
For
Curren, “I doubt Williamsburg will ever gentrify like Chelsea or the Meat
Market. That’s Manhattan; this is Billyburg, man. We’ve got a different
mentality over here.”
