A glance at the list of events this weekend made me scream a little, and when I took a closer look I was screaming for sure. Apologies to my cats and neighbors but this weekend will be EPIC! With Art Basel Miami and Holidays in December, we haven’t seen too many art openings lately. Well, cry no more! Friday will be a big night for art, so have an extra cup of coffee before you go out! After you’re done with all the openings, we suggest some dancing to keep you warm! And not just any dancing, but some proper Bushwick wilderness… Are you ready? Let’s go!

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Two ideas were organically integrated into nearly every discussion during the citydrift panel discussions over the weekend.

1. Art galleries in this neighborhood are artist enablers.

2. People involved in this scene, veterans of older ones, and even casual observers are keenly aware of the assumed narrative of what happens as artists move into neighborhoods.

To the first point, there were over three hours of artist panels on Saturday to kick it off. Artists who participated in citydrift each gave presentations in Momenta Art.

Drawing by Michael Kronenberg of the various artist panels in Momenta Art. (more…)

After a good Sunday night’s sleep, we woke up to a fresh almost autumn day and to our new website! It will take us a couple of weeks of twisting and tweaking to get every single detail in place but, for the most part, the website is working great!

As I mentioned on Friday, one of the biggest and most exciting changes is that we are crowd-sourcing our events calendar! Previously, we have been simply listing all the (greater) Bushwick events we’ve heard about, which wasn’t always complete or ideal for orientation. Now we are opening the doors to everyone who is organizing fun stuff in Bushwick and wants to share it! You can simply add your event in our event section on the right, and have it displayed directly on our homepage! As a reader you can simply click on Events and browse them according to the categories and subcategories that are of interest to you.

We strongly believe that this democratization and crowd-sourcing of events calendar will create a better informational flow and a lot of joy to everyone! Do you have any suggestions on how to improve it? And how do you like our new website? Leave us a note in the comments!

Thank you, Bushwick!

Soap bubbles at Bogart Street. The night of the citydrift may begin! (all photos and a video by the author)

Soap bubbles, tiny tequilas, violently damaged Golem of Bushwick, poetry, industrial landscape, multi-person ping pong, Joy Ride…and I have barely started to describe how was the Friday night in the name of citydrift.

Citydrift is a project created and produced by Peter Hopkins (who wrote a great essay on letting go about it) and Meenakshi Thurikode, both from The Bogart Salon. After Bushwick, citydrift will take place in other cities of the world.

On Friday night, small groups of about 2 to 10 people began to drift from one of the drift sites. Experiencing accidental or intentional art of the night Bushwick landscape was the goal of the Friday night drifting, and participants were sharing their experience on social media using the hashtag #citydrift. I joined the drift of Meenakshi Thurikode and naturally I couldn’t pass a drift organized by Mama Joy’s titled Joy Ride. Mama Joy’s hired an awesome car illuminated by crazy LED lights and was offering free rides to Mama Joy’s. Meenakshi, referencing an old Indian myth, was prompting her drifters as well as other randomly encountered people to whisper a wish in her ear that was promised to come true. Other drifters on her experience team included poets Modesto Flako Jimenez, Zohra Saed, Kiran Chanda,  and artists Soek Hyun Han and Ken Kocses.

Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to various panels and artist discussions that all had one basic underlying question in common: “What are we building in Bushwick? Can we create a model that serves to the good of all?”

Here is what we experienced:

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The first post on Bushwick Daily on September 19, 2010. Getting seriously nostalgic here…

No, this is no grandma’s rant about how everything changes before you even get used to the old stuff. But the truth is that big changes are coming for Bushwick Daily. Some really, really good changes. Consider it a present from us to you by occasion of our approaching second birthday…

The first thing you will notice on Monday morning when you load Bushwick Daily page (and I know that that’s the first thing you do after you wake up, am I right? [wink]), is the brand new web design!

We’ve had the current design for almost a year, and as much as we like it, we think it’s time to move on. Together with our neighborhood, Bushwick Daily has been growing: we have had more contributors [looove!] and have been doing more comprehensive coverage of our beloved pigeon town [fun!] and there have been some really good events [paarty!]! The new site will reflect the direction where Bushwick Daily is going, and also will be a better tool for the community to find out about all the stuff we love and talk about in Bushwick. It will be easier to look for the posts and topics you’re interested in, and most importantly we will have a new, absolutely brilliant events calendar! Bushwick is growing into an exciting arts and culture mecca, and we need to inform more effectively about what’s going on in town. New calendar will enable the venues and members of the community to register and list their events on Bushwick Daily for free. Naturally, we will continue highlighting the events we like the best by creating top weekly events and editor’s picks.

All these exciting changes are happening thanks to our collaboration with Blankslate, who have been pampering a number of rad neighborhood blogs into perfection.

I could obviously talk about this for hours (and I didn’t even mention new cute icons, did I?) but it’s probably better to simply see it. So I’m wishing you an amazing (really) eventful weekend, and I see you on the other site!

photo by Maria Gotay

Do you loooove music? Are you a skilled writer (and potentially photographer)?  Are you familiar with the Bushwick Music scene? How about all these cool DIY venue that are popping up? Do you want to be a music writer for Bushwick Daily?

We are hosting an open call for music writers. If you’ve got what it takes, or just want to try it out, drop us a line!

bushwickdaily@gmail.com

Gritty nitty Bushwick, DIY, semi-legal, semi-dirty venue underneath the loud JMZ tracks… If you’re going to  XPO929, make sure to put some colorful plugs or even better toilet paper in your ears… Some things are just true classy, Bushwick…  (more…)

For Bushwick, this summer’s art exhibitions were few and far between. There was a tendency to go for long exhibitions high on concept, NURTUREart’s Is This Free…? comes to mind as does Norte Maar’s Beyond the Bedroom.

The same can be said for my pick of the best show of the summer, Secret Project Robot‘s month-long hosting of the You Are Here Festival. Also known as The Maze, conceptualized and created by the duo Trouble. This year’s iteration, formerly held at Death by Audio in Williamsburg and now heading to Berlin, featured walls made from twine, many performances, and interactive art pieces hidden within the maze.

This kid.

The best part about this exhibition was how much it loosened up the participants up. I didn’t see another show this summer, including during Bushwick Open Studios, that organically inspired this much conversation between people. You weren’t being told to buy into anything when you entered, you were given a plane to explore. What you got out of this show was entirely unique to you and depended only on your willingness to enter. Even if  you hated the experience, it was a success, I have yet to hear an indifferent opinion on this show.

Obviously we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Best of Summer is our mini series to provide a sweet look back into the summer awesomeness and to honor some stuff, which by its coolness exceeds any our expectations far beyond everyday life.

Ready, Steady, GO!

Combining crowdsourcing with the perennial trend of participatory art, GO Brooklyn, which will debut this weekend in New York’s most populous borough, is an attempt to produce a “community curated open studio project.” The pilot program is an experimental exhibition organized by The Brooklyn Museum, made capable through collaboration with a host of volunteer delegates coordinating the composite neighborhoods. In order to participate, you must be an artist with a registered studio or a registered voter who can “check-in” at any given location via an Internet application. Participants can nominate up to three of their favorite artists, but only after checking in at a minimum of five studios. Nominations will be tallied from the GO Brooklyn I-phone app, text messages, or numeric codes assigned to each studio on the mobile website. Ten artists with the highest number of votes will be awarded a studio visit from a Brooklyn Museum curator to select work for an exhibition opening at the museum on December 1, 2012.

Despite the numerous (and somewhat exclusionary) parameters of the project, the website is surprisingly clean and well designed. Under the “explore” tab, 12 artists are featured from a selection of randomly chosen studios (out of hundreds of registered locations) and users can also search with a keyword or name. Results are filterable by location, accessibility, and/or medium. The best feature? Registrants can save noteworthy entries to a sharable itinerary list to help organize (and remember) their path.

Over 1750 studios are signed up for GO Brooklyn, making it nearly impossible for visitors to hit every one in the two-day span. To help intimidated art-seekers get started, here is a link to my own tentative itinerary (subject to change based on ambition level and reliability of public transportation in Brooklyn, which, on any given weekend, is spotty at best.)

I am curious to explore studios in the Navy Yard, one of the more historic artist enclaves in Brooklyn. It’s a bit off the beaten path, but well worth the visit in my opinion: waterfront views of Manhattan’s skyline, spacious studios, and an establishment of accomplished, mature artists. BLDG 92, located at 63 Flushing, just opened a new visitor center, exhibition space, and coffee spot, in addition to free shuttle service from Downtown Brooklyn. Don’t miss: John King‘s “graphite fields of shading that precisely describe volume and light“, Myrna Gordon‘s organic sculptures, and Poby’s World.

Next on my list are some studios in the Gowanus and Redhook area (with an upcoming Open Studios of its own this October, Gowanus is the area surrounding the canal just southeast of Red Hook), but I am most excited to see Brian Kenny‘s sculptures (I love anything involving taxonomy, shadow boxes and/or miniatures); the figurative paintings of Charles Miller; and Ethan Greenbaum’s refined landscapes, to name a few on my list.

FYI, Kenny’s location – Screwball Studios at 183 Lorraine St. – is home to numerous other GO Brooklyn-registered artists that look worthy of a visit.

If I’m feeling very ambitious, I may try and make it out to some lesser-known areas (for art studios, at least) like Coney Island/Brighton Beach/Sheepshead Bay Area. I want to see Gerard Barbot’s quirky found-object pieces and check out what an enamel shop looks like at Howard Eisman’s studio.

The plan is to end up in Greenpoint at the end of the day, which is my favorite neighborhood in Brooklyn (after Bushwick of course) because it is home to Five Leaves, Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, Beloved, and several friends’ apartments. Romanian painter Dan Sabau will opens his studio doors, as well as video and performance artist Bruce McClure. I’m also hoping to squeeze in a visit to Gabriela Salazar space to see some of her large-scale sculptures in situ.

Check back next week for a recap of the weekend.

By Alexandra Uzik

Julia

Bushwick-New Jersey-Bushwick

About: Julia works in New Jersey but because she loves to live in Bushwick she decided to commute every day. She lives in a house with a garden and three cats.

Fashion:  Her expressive hat is a good conversation starter.

Favorite thing about Bushwick: The mixture of all kinds of people – new and old.  (more…)