It began with a gallery opening and it ended with a rooftop dance party, as organizers called the Bushwick Open Studio arts festival the neighborhood’s best festival yet.
With more than 300 art studios spread from Graham Avenue to Myrtle Avenue open to the public last weekend, the festival attracted thousands of curious onlookers who sweated out visits from un-air conditioned apartments and lofts in search of amazing visual works by the neighborhood’s Picassos and Rembrandts.
The show lacked its usual unexpected spectacle, but visitors to English Kills Gallery on Forrest Street were treated to a walk-in refrigerator, stocked with beer and juices, a refreshing installation to beat the weekend’s nearly 90-degree heat.
After the gallery, visitors walked up Bogart Street to Baby Skin Glove, where, guests received makeovers, spray-on tans, and an aerobics workout to work off those extra English Kills pounds, from this helpful performing arts collective.
It was impossible to see everything, though Jimmy Miracle’s “string theory” sculpture, Andrew Cornell Robinson’s creative ceramic pieces, Jeremiah Jones’s installation reflecting crushing loneliness with bunnies, Jessica Angel’s stencil work, Theresa Ganz’s hand-cut botanical paper prints, Matthew Miller and Heather Garland’s portraits and Norte Maar’s impressive group show were among the notable exhibits.
And while it may not have been “art,” gallery-goers could not keep their eyes off curvy Ariel Brickman, who stopped traffic by sitting topless in a hot pink bathtub.